Einstein Experts

Craig A. Branch, Ph.D.

Associate Professor, Radiology

Director, Gruss Magnetic Resonance Research Center

Co-Director, EGL Integrated Imaging Program

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)Sickle cell disease Traumatic Brain Injury and Concussion MRI measures of function and physiology

Dr. Craig Branch is an internationally-known MRI researcher who has been a pioneer in using the technology since it was first developed in the early 1980s. Dr. Branch directs Einstein’s Gruss Magnetic Resonance Research Center, which supports a wide variety of MRI studies of brain injury and disease, liver disease, cancer, and other disorders.

Dr. Branch specializes in the use of MRI to study disease in both humans and animal models. He was one of the first to use MRI to measure blood flow in the brain, and he employs the technology to assess brain function and structure in numerous disorders, including sickle cell disease, stroke, traumatic brain injury and schizophrenia. He is one of the only researchers to have used animal models of sickle cell disease (SCD) to research the biological mechanisms that underlie cognitive impairment and strokes in SCD. Research findings in this area suggest that brain blood flow associated with SCD strokes is unusually high—a finding that could lead to treatments that might ward off strokes in SCD patients.

Dr. Branch is also Co-Director of the Evelyn-Gruss-Lipper Integrated Imaging Program (EGL-IIP) which seeks to use microscopic-to-macroscopic imaging scales to understand the mechanisms that contribute to breast and other metastatic cancers. Research in this area incorporates both rodent models of cancer and clinical studies of human breast cancer. In addition to his NIH-funded research, Dr. Branch has served as an MRI expert on several NIH ad-hoc review committees.