I am a final-year PhD student at MIT CSAIL, advised by Prof. Polina Golland and Prof. Justin Solomon. I am part of the Medical Vision Group and the Geometric Data Processing Group. My research interests are in geometry processing, machine learning, computer vision, and computer graphics applied to medical images. I am excited about developing computational tools to improve healthcare. I collaborate closely with physicians and researchers at the Boston Children's Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital to study the placenta in MRI.
I have been lucky to spend one summer working at Philips Research North America. Prior to joining MIT, I received my Bachelor's Degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of British Columbia (UBC). During my undergraduate studies, I did research in biomedical signal processing and childhood exercise psychology with Guy Dumont (UBC), particle physics with Ruediger Picker (TRIUMF), and medical image analysis with Jerry Prince (JHU).
Outside of research, I am a communication advisor with the MIT EECS Communication Lab, where I provide coaching on technical communication. From 2017-2019, I was a co-president of the EECS Graduate Students Association, where I worked with the department administration and graduate students to foster an inclusive academic and social environment.
I am grateful to be supported by the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, the NSERC PGS D, the MathWorks Fellowship, and the Siebel Fellowship.
In my spare time, I enjoy playing basketball and golf.
I am currently on the job market! If you are hiring for research scientist or postdoctoral positions, please reach out.
@article{dey2023any, title={AnyStar: Domain randomized universal star-convex 3D instance segmentation}, author={Dey, Neel and Abulnaga, S Mazdak and Billot, Benjamin and Turk, Esra Abaci and Grant, P Ellen and Dalca, Adrian V and Golland, Polina}, journal={arXiv preprint arXiv:2307.07044}, year={2023}}
@article{abulnaga2022symmetric, title={Symmetric Volume Maps: Order-Invariant Volumetric Mesh Correspondence with Free Boundary}, author={Abulnaga, S Mazdak and Stein, Oded and Golland, Polina and Solomon, Justin}, journal={ACM Transactions on Graphics}, volume={42}, number={3}, pages={1--20}, year={2023}, publisher={ACM New York, NY}}
@article{abulnaga2022automatic, title={Automatic Segmentation of the Placenta in BOLD MRI Time Series}, author={Abulnaga, S Mazdak and Young, Sean I and Hobgood, Katherine and Pan, Eileen and Wang, Clinton J and Grant, P Ellen and Turk, Esra Abaci and Golland, Polina}, journal={arXiv preprint arXiv:2208.02895}, year={2022} }
@article{abulnaga2022volumetric, title={Volumetric Parameterization of the Placenta to a Flattened Template}, author={Abulnaga, S. Mazdak and Abaci Turk, Esra and Bessmeltsev, Mikhail and Grant, P. Ellen and Solomon, Justin and Golland, Polina}, journal={IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging}, year={2022}, volume={41}, number={4}, pages={925-936}}
@article{li2021hex, title={Interactive All-Hex Meshing via Cuboid Decomposition}, author={Li, Lingxiao and Zhang, Paul and Smirnov, Dmitriy and Abulnaga, Mazdak and and Solomon, Justin}, month={December}, year={2021}, journal={ACM Transactions on Graphics (TOG)}, publisher={ACM}, volume={40}, number={6}, pages={256:1--256:17} }
@article{abaciturk2020placental, title={Placental {MRI}: Effect of maternal position and uterine contractions on placental {BOLD MRI} measurements}, author = {Esra {Abaci Turk} and S. Mazdak Abulnaga and Jie Luo and Jeffrey N. Stout and Henry A. Feldman and Ata Turk and Borjan Gagoski and Lawrence L. Wald and Elfar Adalsteinsson and Drucilla J. Roberts and Carolina Bibbo and Julian N. Robinson and Polina Golland and P. Ellen Grant and William H. Barth}, journal = {Placenta}, volume = {95}, pages = {69-77}, year = {2020} }
@inproceedings{abulnaga2019placental, title={Placental Flattening via Volumetric Parameterization}, author={Abulnaga, S. Mazdak and Abaci Turk, Esra and Bessmeltsev, Mikhail and Grant, P. Ellen and Solomon, Justin and Golland, Polina}, booktitle={Medical Image Computing and Computer Assisted Intervention -- MICCAI 2019}, year={2019}, publisher={Springer International Publishing}, address={Cham}, pages={39--47} }
@inproceedings{rubin2019ct, author={Rubin, Jonathan and Abulnaga, S. Mazdak}, booktitle={2019 IEEE International Conference on Healthcare Informatics (ICHI)}, title={CT-To-MR Conditional Generative Adversarial Networks for Ischemic Stroke Lesion Segmentation}, year={2019}, volume={}, number={}, pages={1-7}, doi={10.1109/ICHI.2019.8904574} }
@inproceedings{abulnaga2019ischemic, author={Abulnaga S. Mazdak, Rubin, Jonathan}, title={Ischemic Stroke Lesion Segmentation in CT Perfusion Scans Using Pyramid Pooling and Focal Loss}, booktitle={Brainlesion: Glioma, Multiple Sclerosis, Stroke and Traumatic Brain Injuries}, year={2019}, publisher={Springer International Publishing}, address={Cham}, pages={352--363} }
@inproceedings{abulnaga2016toolbox, title={A toolbox to visually explore cerebellar shape changes in cerebellar disease and dysfunction}, author={Abulnaga, S Mazdak and Yang, Zhen and Carass, Aaron and Kansal, Kalyani and Jedynak, Bruno M and Onyike, Chiadi U and Ying, Sarah H and Prince, Jerry L}, booktitle={Medical Imaging 2016: Computer-Aided Diagnosis}, volume={9785}, pages={97852P}, year={2016}, organization={International Society for Optics and Photonics} }
@inproceedings{yang2016landmark, title={Landmark based shape analysis for cerebellar ataxia classification and cerebellar atrophy pattern visualization}, author={Yang, Zhen and Abulnaga, S Mazdak and Carass, Aaron and Kansal, Kalyani and Jedynak, Bruno M and Onyike, Chiadi and Ying, Sarah H and Prince, Jerry L}, booktitle={Medical Imaging 2016: Image Processing}, volume={9784}, pages={97840P}, year={2016}, organization={International Society for Optics and Photonics} }