Christopher T. Whitlow, MD, PhD, MHA is an endowed and tenured physician-scientist, holding the “I. Meschan Distinguished Professorship” at Advocate Health/Wake Forest University School of Medicine, with cross-disciplinary appointments in the Department of Radiology, Department of Biomedical Engineering, and Public Health Sciences Department of Biostatistics & Data Science. As Enterprise Chair of Radiology, Dr. Whitlow leads clinical imaging operations and serves the tripartite mission of Advocate Health/Wake Forest University School of Medicine focused on excellence in clinical care, education and research in one of the largest non-for-profit medical systems in the U.S., spanning seven states across the South-East and Mid-West, caring for nearly 6-million patients at more than one-thousand health care delivery sites and 67 hospitals. As Director of the Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute “Translational Imaging Program,” Dr. Whitlow also leads the research imaging infrastructure of Advocate Health/Wake Forest University School of Medicine, which drives imaging-based scientific innovation and clinical trials across the enterprise. In addition, he is the founder and director of the Radiology Informatics and Image Processing Laboratory (RIIPL). RIIPL focuses on multisite high-throughput big data processing and analysis of multimodal imaging data (CT, MRI, PET, MEG, etc.) applied to humans and research animal models. Dr. Whitlow has been able to leverage his PhD doctoral training as a neurophysiologist and neuropharmacologist to develop new imaging protocols and techniques for novel in vivo imaging that have been applied to ongoing studies across multiple research domains, including neuro-oncology, traumatic brain injury, Alzheimer’s disease/dementia, movement disorders, substance use, diabetes, regenerative medicine, and early brain development/aging. Dr. Whitlow also has a strong data science background and has used a variety of computational informatics techniques to analyze imaging data, including graph theoretical network methods and artificial intelligence/machine learning. His extensive training in epidemiology and public health research methodologies has provided him with the critical skills necessary to lead important large-scale translational studies of disease at the population level. Dr. Whitlow presently has more than 20-million USD of active research funding as lead/principal investigator from the National Institutes of Health and private foundations, as well as more than 83-million USD of active research funding as a team-science co-investigator. His research has resulted in more than 400 published peer-reviewed journal articles, abstracts and book chapters, and is frequently cited in the peer-reviewed literature. As a board-certified clinical neuroradiologist, Dr. Whitlow has interpreted thousands of clinical imaging studies to evaluate patients with a variety of diseases affecting the brain, head/neck and spine, and his clinical and research imaging experience has resulted in appointments at the national level. Most recently, Dr. Whitlow has been elected to the executive leadership of the American Society of Functional Neuroradiology (ASFNR), and will ascend to the role of President in 2023. He also serves as Chair of the American College of Radiology Neuroradiology Research Committee and Head Injury Institute, as well as Steering Committee member of The National Traumatic Brain Injury Registry Coalition (NTRC), and Imaging Director of The Alzheimer’s Network for Treatment and Diagnostics (ALZ-NET), where he is working to develop new neuroimaging biomarkers for use in research and clinical translation. Through his clinical practice, research, and national/international service, Dr. Whitlow is at the cutting edge of imaging translation from bench-top to clinical practice.
Lecture: Advanced Neuroimaging for TBI
