Dr. Sossena Wood is an Assistant Professor within the Biomedical Engineering department at Carnegie Mellon University. Her research focuses on 1) using multimodal hemodynamic imaging to understand the neurological effects of vascular diseases, particularly sickle cell disease, and also 2) improving the performance of optical imaging technology for individuals of diverse hair and skin types. Dr. Wood completed her Ph.D. in Bioengineering at the University of Pittsburgh under the guidance of Professor Tamer S. Ibrahim in 2018 and was a K. Leroy Irvis Fellow, National GEM Consortium PhD Fellow, Pitt STRIVE Fellow, and received other academic and community awards. She was a part of the inaugural Presidential Postdoctoral Fellowship at Carnegie Mellon University. She received a Bachelor of Science in electrical engineering in 2011 and believes the platform of her success sprung from the Pitt EXCEL program.
Dr. Wood’s research lab is focused on developing a multi-modal, noninvasive hemodynamic imaging technique and data analysis to visualize and quantify the management and the treatment of vascular diseases with neural effects and neural disorders, especially sickle cell disease. Her lab investigates and evaluates cerebral health biomarkers in cerebrovascular disease populations using multi-modal hemodynamic and neural imaging with MRI, NIRS and EEG, including the neural pathways of pain and cognition. The focus is to contribute to the scientific community's understanding as to why and how cerebrovascular disease changes cerebral health under various functional states (i.e., sleep, rest, cognition).