Dr. Wu is a Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry of UIC and the Director of Neuroimaging Methods at the UIC Pediatric BRAIN Center. At the BRAIN Center, Dr. Wu is developing advanced functional and structural MR imaging techniques (including T1w, DTI, resting-state and task-evoked fMRI) and applying these techniques to characterize the developmental trajectories of normal brain maturation as well as the developmental perturbations or deviations in neuropsychiatric disorders. These include: map the abnormally engaged resting state affective, executive, and sensorimotor networks in psychotropic naïve patients with pediatric mania using resting state fMRI; probe the affective and cognitive abnormalities in pediatric psychiatric disorders using GLM-based and ICA-based functional connectivity methods on task-evoked fMRI; identify structural abnormalities in major white matter bundles and cortical gray matter in pediatric bipolar disorder.

During her Ph.D. training in Bioengineering at the University of Pittsburgh, Dr. Wu worked at the Geriatric Psychiatry Neuroimaging Lab of the Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic (WPIC), during which she developed MR imaging algorithms including Automated Labeling Pathway (ALP) for brain image segmentation, automated white matter hyperintensity (WMH) segmentation and localization algorithms, and Optimum MRI Template Selection method for more accurate brain image segmentation/normalization. Using resting-state fMRI, Dr. Wu found altered default-mode network in late-life depression compared to controls. During her curricular practical training in the Section on Tissue Biophysics & Biomimetics (STBB), National Institute of Child Health & Human Development (NICHD)/National Institutes of Health (NIH), Dr. Wu developed the image-registration based EPI distortion correction algorithm for DTI data processing, which is included in the NIH diffusion MRI data processing software package: TORTOISE. During her post-doctoral training at the Department of Neurology, Northwestern University, Dr. Wu used high resolution DTI and resting state connectivity analysis method to study Parkinson's disease.