Faculty & Researchers

Dr. Lin received the B.S. degree from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and the Ph.D. degree from Duke University, all in biomedical engineering. He is currently the Director for Clinical Research in North America for Visage Imaging and is stationed at Yale-New Haven Hospital where he oversees, coordinates, drives and directs research collaborations with high profile academic hospitals in North America to develop new solutions for diagnostic image analysis and guidance that improve clinical and operational outcomes while reducing cost of care. This includes Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) applications in the Radiology enterprise diagnostic imaging solutions space. Dr. Lin identifies opportunities for academic-industry research partnerships, and acts as the liaison between Visage Imaging researchers and clinical collaborators to translate ideas to prototype for clinical validation, with the goal of technology transfer to product. A highlight is Ming coordinated the clinical data curation and ground-truth annotation for building a fully automatic breast density AI classifier that provides an ACR BI-RADS Atlas 5th Edition breast density category to aid radiologists in the assessment of breast tissue composition from full field digital mammography and digital breast tomosynthesis systems and drove the clinical validation with Yale radiologists and Visage developers that led to transfer to product and regulatory approvals in 21 months following IRB approval and has been in full clinical production use at Yale since April 2021. Moreover, Dr. Lin directed the study with Yale radiologists to assess the AI algorithm’s post-clinical deployment performance, and we found there was 99.35% agreement in classifying the breast density between the AI and the radiologist. This was the first FDA-cleared AI algorithm that reported having >1000 patients for validating the AI from two different clinical sites: Yale and New York University (NYU), and it was the first for a major PACS vendor to offer a self-developed, FDA-cleared AI algorithm natively into their PACS: Visage Breast Density, K201411, 510(k) clearance, January 2021, Health Canada Licensed, October 2020, Australian TGA approval, July 2020, CE Mark Cleared, May 2020. Another effort Dr. Lin is working on is multi-institution AI research to develop robust deep learning methods for generating patient-specific virtual-high-count PET images from standard PET images, thereby saving imaging time, reducing radiation dose, and increasing scanner longevity. This work is being conducted in an NIH R01 academic-industry partnership grant where Dr. Lin is the Visage Imaging, Inc. Principal Investigator (PI), and the other partners are Yale New Haven, Massachusetts General Brigham, and University of California Davis hospitals. Dr. Lin also is directly involved in research to develop better ways to treat patients with liver cancer using transcatheter arterial chemoembolization (TACE), and in this context, he is also the chief engineer and operations manager of the Yale Interventional Oncology Research Lab. Dr. Lin is Principal Investigator (PI) on two NIH R01 grants and the Industry PI on its renewal NIH R01 grant (three grants in total) to improve the diagnosis, treatment, and response assessment after transcatheter arterial chemoembolization for patients with liver cancer. Dr. Lin is the inventor of 3D quantification TACE therapy response tool (qEASL) and in collaboration with clinical partners, validated, and showed clinical relevance (ability to predict patient survival) that led to transfer to commercial product (FDA 510(k) cleared December 2016 - Multi-Modality Tumor Tracking (MMTT) application). Prior to Visage Imaging, Dr. Lin was the Philips research site manager and senior researcher stationed onsite at Yale where he managed the research portfolio and partnership Philips has with Yale. Ming was inducted to the Council of Distinguished Investigators in the Academy for Radiology and Biomedical Imaging Research on October 10, 2024 for his outstanding contributions to medical imaging.

Dr. Chapiro is an Associate Professor in Radiology, Digestive Diseases (Hepatology) and in Biomedical Engineering, Principal Investigator of the Yale Interventional Oncology Research Lab and Director of the Center for Minimally Invasive Therapies. After graduating from the University of Leipzig and upon completion of his research thesis at the Justus-Liebig University in Giessen with summa cum laude, he served as a postdoctoral research fellow in interventional oncology at The Johns Hopkins Hospital and then as radiology resident at the Department of Radiology, Charité University Hospital in Berlin. He joined the Department of Radiology and Biomedical Imaging in 2016 as a research scientist and interventional radiology resident from Berlin, Germany. Dr. Chapiro’s research focuses on developing new quantitative imaging biomarkers for the diagnosis, characterization, and therapeutic management of liver cancer. His translational research portfolio includes the development of novel embolic agents as well as the application of artificial intelligence solutions for the management of liver cancer. His basic research interest mainly focuses on developing new tools to characterize the tumor microenvironment and the immune system in the setting of loco-regional, image-guided therapies of liver cancer. Creating innovative and clinically applicable imaging solutions for liver cancer with advanced molecular imaging, image post-processing and machine learning approaches and translating them to clinical practice has been his central mission for the past decade. He authored and co-authored >170 original research articles, reviews and book chapters and gave more than 150 talks and invited lectures at national and international forums within the last seven years including in Europe, China, South Korea and the Middle East. His research has also resulted in several patents, 510(k)-approved medical products and significant grant support from federal, foundational and industry sources. He is an active research mentor to more than 70 undergraduate, medical and graduate students as well as peers both at Yale and other national and international institutions. Being an active contributor, journal-, abstract- and grant reviewer in several professional societies (RSNA, SIR, CIRSE and SIO), he is also committed to education and the mission of disseminating research data and scientific knowledge. Dr. Chapiro is an Editorial Board member of the Journal of Hepatology (EASL), Radiology and Radiology: AI (RSNA), Journal of Vascular and Interventional Radiology (SIR) and Cardiovascular and Interventional Radiology: Oncology (CIRSE). He is a member of the American College of Radiology Liver Imaging Reporting and Data System (LI-RADS) Steering Committee, he additionally chairs the Grant Committee of the Society of Interventional Oncology and chaired the Annual Meeting Program Planning Committee for the Subspecialty of Interventional Radiology at the Annual Radiological Society of North America meeting 2021-2023. He is the co-initiator of the "Rising Star" Student Exchange Program in collaboration with the Charité University Hospital in Berlin and directs the Center for Minimally Invasive Therapies. Dr. Chapiro is the Associate Director of the Clinical and Translational Core of the Yale Liver Center.

Eliot Funai graduated from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and previously worked at Johns Hopkins University before coming to Yale. His work as a clinical research coordinator is to develop and oversee the management and execution of clinical trials, primarily concerning locoregional therapies for treating liver cancers. His experience is with investigator initiated studies, industry and NIH-funded trials, and cooperative group studies.

Dr. Fabian M. Laage Gaupp graduated from Medical School at Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich and completed his surgical internship at Cornell Presbyterian Hospital in New York. He then pursued residency training in Diagnostic and Interventional Radiology at Yale New Haven Hospital, where he served as Chief Resident of Interventional Radiology. In 2021, he was appointed Assistant Professor of Vascular and Interventional Radiology in Yale's Department of Radiology and Biomedical Imaging. Dr. Laage Gaupp is dedicated to training the next generation of Interventional Radiologists. After serving as Assistant Program Director and Medical Student Clerkship Director for Yale's Interventional Radiology education program for several years, he took over as Interventional Radiology Program Director in 2024. He specializes in minimally invasive treatments for Men’s and Women’s Health, offering innovative solutions for conditions such as benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH) and uterine fibroids. Through image-guided procedures like prostate artery embolization and uterine fibroid embolization, Dr. Laage Gaupp provides effective, outpatient-based treatment options that eliminate the need for major surgery, allowing patients to return home the same day. As a co-founder of Road2IR, an international consortium led by Yale, Muhimbili University of Health and Allied Sciences (MUHAS) in Tanzania, Emory, and other institutions in North America and Europe, Dr. Laage Gaupp has contributed to establishing several Interventional Radiology training programs in East Africa, expanding access to minimally invasive procedures to more patients.

Matteo Conte is a Postdoctoral Associate in the Department of Radiology and Biomedical Imaging at Yale University, where he hopes to continue his medical training. He earned his Doctor of Medicine degree from the University of Padova, Italy, with a thesis focused on spontaneous intracranial hypotension. His academic journey includes a research traineeship at the renowned Mayo Clinic in Minnesota and clinical externships across the United States. Before joining Yale, Dr. Conte worked as a primary care physician in Italy, serving the community of Romano d’Ezzelino, a small town at the foothills of Monte Grappa. His current research focuses on catheter-directed therapies for the treatment of pulmonary embolism and deep vein thrombosis. He investigates imaging-based outcome prediction, procedural technique optimization, and vascular segmentation to improve treatment strategies and long-term patient outcomes.

Luisa Heidemann is a visiting undergraduate in the Yale Interventional Oncology (IO) Research Lab and a medical student at Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Germany. As a core member of the Minimally Invasive Tumor Therapies Lab at Charité, she focuses on the locoregional effects following transarterial chemoembolization (TACE) in the context of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). At the renowned annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America in 2024 in Chicago, USA, she presented preliminary results and received a travel grant from the Rolf W. Günther Foundation for Radiological Research. In the Yale IO Lab, she utilizes her previously acquired methodology to quantify longitudinal immune cell infiltration induced by drug-eluting bead TACE in human HCC samples.

Lisa Peschke is a visiting undergraduate researcher in the Interventional Oncology (IO) Research Lab at the Department of Radiology and Biomedical Imaging, Yale School of Medicine, where she joined as part of the “Rising Star” exchange program—a collaborative initiative between Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin and Yale. She is currently pursuing her medical degree at Charité. At Charité, she was involved in clinical research in the Department of Thoracic Surgery, where she led an independent study evaluating the postoperative course of patients following elective lung surgery under an Enhanced Recovery After Surgery (ERAS) protocol. She further contributed to clinical science through an independent project in the Department of Cardiology at Charité Campus Virchow Hospital, focusing on the validation of a non-invasive MRI-based method for measuring central venous oxygen saturation. At the IO Lab at Yale, she is working on a basic science research project investigating immune response following different ablation therapies in varying tumor phenotypes in the context of liver cancer. Her research stay is supported by the Biomedical Education Program (BMEP) scholarship.

Selma Saclier is a Visiting Undergraduate in Research in the Department of Radiology and Biomedical Imaging at Yale School of Medicine, where she joined the Interventional Oncology (IO) Research Lab as part of the “Rising Star” exchange program, a collaborative initiative between Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin and Yale. At Charité, she is a member of the Minimally Invasive Tumor Therapies (MITT) Lab, where her research focused on the correlation of anatomical parameters in VX2 tumor-bearing New Zealand White rabbits. The project was conducted within the framework of an animal welfare-oriented study investigating the physiological variability of anatomical structures and was funded by a Charité 3R research grant. At the IO Lab at Yale, she is pursuing a data science-based project aimed at predicting recurrence after thermal ablation of hepatocellular carcinoma. This involves a retrospective analysis of imaging data using coregistration techniques and radiomics. She was awarded the IO Essentials Scholarship and attended the Annual Meeting of the Society of Interventional Oncology (SIO) in January 2025 in Las Vegas, USA. Her research stay at Yale is supported by a travel grant from the Rolf W. Günther Foundation for Radiological Research. In addition, she is a recipient of the Deutschlandstipendium for outstanding academic performance and the Biomedical Education Program (BMEP) scholarship for her project at Yale.

Jessica is currently pursuing her PhD in Biomedical Engineering at Yale. She received her B.Sc in Biomedical Sciences from the Universidade Estadual de Santa Cruz (UESC), Brazil, with further research experience from McGill University, Canada, and Harvard School of Public Health, USA through the Science Without Borders Scholarship Program. Upon graduating from UESC, she received her fully funded master’s degree in Biomedical Sciences with a focus on cancer development and immune responses from Radboud Universiteit, Netherlands. She concluded her program at the Department of Immunobiology at Yale University. She worked as a Postgraduate Research Associate at the Department of Radiology and Biomedical Imaging, where she optimized animal models of liver cancer for molecular characterization of the tumor microenvironment to loco-regional therapies from an imaging perspective.

Dr. Jonathan Tefera is a resident physician in Interventional Radiology at Yale New Haven Hospital. His clinical and research interests focus on minimally invasive cancer therapies, particularly in liver cancer. Dr. Tefera has led studies on portal vein embolization and was recognized with the RSNA Trainee Research Prize. He brings a strong background in translational oncology and remains dedicated to advancing patient-centered, image-guided interventions.