Personnel

Kedar Narayan, Ph.D.

Senior Scientist, Group Leader

Kedar Narayan is the group leader for the volume EM group at the CMM. He earned a Ph.D. in immunology, and has a research background in chemistry, pathology, and biophysics. Kedar’s work focuses on the use of emerging technologies for cellular imaging. At CMM, he is responsible for FIB-SEM and array tomography, technology development and for driving collaborative projects that use volume EM and correlative imaging approaches to explore cellular mechanisms.

Melissa Mikolai, Ph.D.

Scientist

Melissa Mikolaj received her Ph.D. in biophysics from Purdue University with a focus on TEM. She specialized in using 3D EM techniques like electron tomography to study the changes to cellular organelles caused by alphaviruses throughout their lifecycle. She also did a post-doc at the NIH where she developed skills in cryo-electron tomography and cryo-FIB SEM. At CMM, she focuses on the development and implementation of enhanced protocols for correlative imaging and volume EM over a range of different resolutions.

Adam Harned

Research Associate

Adam Harned is an electron microscopist with extensive industry and research experience concerning the applications of VP-SEM, FE-SEM and TEM technologies for both biological and materials samples. His main role will be assisting in the collection of FIB-SEM data.

Abhishek Bhardwaj

Research Associate

Abhishek works as a computational research associate with the Volume EM group at CMM. He is a graduate in Computer Science and his primary responsibilities involve image analysis, visualization and quantitation of microscopy data. He is focused on applications of AI to analyze and derive insights from complex datasets.

Christopher Dell

Research Associate

Chris Dell works as a Research Associate for the volume EM group at the CMM. Chris earned his BA in Environmental Science with a concentration in Chemistry from Hood College. He will build on his TEM background to develop and execute sample preparation methods and imaging at our microscopes.

Aayush Bhatawadekar

Post-baccalaureate

Aayush Bhatawadekar is a post-baccalaureate in the CMM-vEM group. He joins us from UC Santa Cruz, where he majored in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. He will build on his interests and skills in computer science as he develops and deploys image analysis solutions for vEM data.

Image Annotation Project

This year CMM-vEM built a crowdsourced image annotation project (Etch-a-cell Mito Mega Mix), and we have been joined remotely by approximately 30 students from various high schools in the Frederick area, via the WHK-SIP program.