Chicago, IL I am a physician scientist, who is currently an Assistant Professor in rheumatology, with an interest in human translational research in immunology, as applied to rheumatic disease patients. My specific focuses are on patients with systemic lupus erythematosus and lupus nephritis as well as the idiopathic inflammatory myositis group of disorders. I am also interested in exploring the representation of LGBT populations in the rheumatic diseases. My main research focus is the role of inflammation and the study of its’ organization, cellular make-up, and presence of cognate versus non-cognate immune interactions by means of computerized, objective, and high-throughput techniques based on image analysis of multichannel immunofluorescently-labeled images of human tissue, acquired with confocal laser scanning microscopy. Together with our collaborators, we have developed cutting edge approaches to the segmentation and analysis of in vivo cellular interactions based on Convolutional Neural Networks and Deep Learning-based approaches. My other interest is in using large epidemiological data sets to study and compare the representation of LGBT populations in the rheumatic diseases, which is a topic with little current understanding. In order to help tackle the above projects, I recently completed a Master's Degree in Medical Bioinformatics with specific focuses on Image Analysis and Big Data Analytics.