Christine Fennema-Notestine, Ph.D.
Assistant Adjunct Professor of Psychiatry and Radiology
Phone #: (858) 822-3198
FAX #: (858) 534-1078
E-mail: fennema@ucsd.edu 

Biography 
Dr. Fennema-Notestine is a cognitive neuroscientist with expertise in cognitive neuropsychology, biomedical informatics, and neuroimaging. She received her B.S. in Brain and Cognitive Sciences from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and her Ph.D. in Cognitive Science and Psychology from UCSD, supported by graduate fellowships from the National Science Foundation and McDonnell-Pew Center for Cognitive Neuroscience. Her post-doctoral work emphasized clinical applications and methods development of structural and functional neuroimaging techniques. Currently, she is an Assistant Adjunct Professor in Psychiatry and Radiology at UCSD, Director of the national Biomedical Informatics Research Network (BIRN) Data Repository, and an investigator on clinical neuroimaging studies and multi-site biomedical informatics projects.

Research Focus 
Dr. Fennema-Notestine’s research emphasizes development and validation of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) methods and the clinical application of these methods to neurodegenerative and psychiatric populations such as Huntington’s Disease, Alzheimer’s Disease, and HIV. To better understand disease evolution and treatment efficacy, her work provides comprehensive descriptions of disease-related brain abnormalities during life and their relationship to cognition, medical variables, and treatment effects. Dr. Fennema-Notestine’s collaborative work with national programs has enabled multi-site clinical imaging studies and demonstrated the feasibility of pooling clinical neuroimaging data across sites. Through these efforts, she has extended her expertise into the complementary field of biomedical informatics. As Director of the BIRN Data Repository, she is part of a biomedical informatics team developing methods and infrastructure to support data sharing and collaboration, and she plays a significant role in efforts to develop standardized terminologies and ontologies for data integration. In addition, she is recognized for her ability to cross domains and support training and education in the national biomedical community.

Clinical Focus 
The end goal for such neuroimaging research, including support for multi-site initiatives and pooling of shared data, is to guide the development of biomarkers for establishing diagnosis and monitoring treatment efficacy, through better descriptions of disease-related brain abnormalities and their relationship to medical variables, cognition, and treatment regimens.

Selected Publications 

• Fennema-Notestine, C., Gamst, A. C., Quinn, B. T., Pacheco, J., Jernigan, T. L., Thal, L., Buckner, R., Killiany, R., Blacker, D., Dale, A. M., Fischl, B., Dickerson, B., & Gollub, R. L. (2007). Feasibility of multi-site clinical structural neuroimaging studies of aging using legacy Ddata. Neuroinformatics, 5(4), 235-245.

• Fennema-Notestine, C., Ozyurt, I. B., Clark, C. P., Morris, S., Bischoff-Grethe, A., Bondi, M. W., Jernigan, T. L., Fischl, B., Segonne, F., Shattuck, D. W., Leahy, R. M., Rex, D. E., Toga, A. W., Zou, K. H., & Brown, G. G. (2006). Quantitative evaluation of automated skull-stripping methods applied to contemporary and legacy images: Effects of diagnosis, bias correction, and slice location. Hum Brain Mapp, 27(2), 99-113.

• Jernigan, T. L., & Fennema-Notestine, C. (2004). White matter mapping is needed. Neurobiol Aging, 25(1), 37-39.

• Fennema-Notestine, C., Archibald, S. L., Jacobson, M. W., Corey-Bloom, J., Paulsen, J. S., Peavy, G. M., Gamst, A. C., Hamilton, J. M., Salmon, D. P., & Jernigan, T. L. (2004). In vivo evidence of cerebellar atrophy and cerebral white matter loss in Huntington disease. Neurology, 63(6), 989-995.

• Fennema-Notestine, C., Stein, M. B., Kennedy, C. M., Archibald, S. L., & Jernigan, T. L. (2002). Brain morphometry in female victims of intimate partner violence with and without posttraumatic stress disorder. Biol Psychiatry, 52(11), 1089-1101.