Matthew Dewitt

Dr. Sarah Duclos is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Sheybani Lab studying focused ultrasound for brain cancer applications, with a specific interest in developing novel integrated PET/MRI approaches with immune-imaging tracers to investigate the evolving response to FUS under different acoustic exposure conditions for brain tumors. She is also interested in working closely with clinical collaborations to enhance our understanding of sonodynamic therapy for treating human brain tumors. Sarah received her Ph.D. from the University of Michigan under the mentorship of Drs. Zhen Xu and Aditya Pandey. During her graduate work, she investigated the use of non-thermal, cavitation-based focused ultrasound ablation (histotripsy) in murine glioblastoma models, demonstrating that transcranial histotripsy can effectively ablate tumors through the skull and lead to therapeutic responses. Sarah began her postdoctoral training at University of Michigan to further advance the understanding of transcranial histotripsy by investigating the acute immunological effects in the brain tumor microenvironment. She was awarded the T32 Cardiovascular Postdoc Training Grant to continue her postdoc training at UVA. Outside of research, Sarah is an avid cyclist and cross-country skier and is excited to explore the Blue Ridge mountains during her time in Charlottesville.