2025 Technologist Director

Employer: Weill Cornell Medical Center/ NYU Langone Medical Center, Jackson Heights, NY

Please explain your current employment role/responsibilities:
Presently, I’m the technical director for the Neurovascular Ultrasound Lab at Weill Cornell Medicine–NY Presbyterian Hospital (2018–). Previously, I was the technical director for a private peripheral vascular ultrasound lab (2016-2018). IAC Vascular Testing Board of Directors member representing the American Academy of Neurology and the American Society of Neuroimaging (ASN).

I also serve on two IAC committees for research and social media, and the taskforce for AI. ASN Board of Directors member and a member of the communication subcommittee on social media and the workgroup for development of the NVS (Neurovascular Specialist) credential. CREST-2 Site Sonographer Lead Sonographer for the completed MOST-CA trial Member of the FACTCATS.org “Evidence-True Guidelines for Carotid Arterial Disease” work group.

What is your previous and current involvement with the SVU?
I’ve been a SVU member since 2008. From 2016-2018 I was vice president of the North Jersey Vascular Association, a SVU chapter servicing primarily NJ and NY vascular technologists. Twice per year we organized and hosted one-day CME conferences for vascular technologists and student sonographers. My role and work centered on finding speakers and developing program content, as well as hands-on work creating the advertisements and social media engagement to publicize the conferences. I was integrally involved in all other planning and logistical work as well for four conferences during my voluntary two-years term.

Please share your passion for/commitment to /experience with vascular ultrasound and how this will be transformative at the Board of Director level:
I will make a difference to SVU and the profession by bringing my experience over the last five years to get a new credential for vascular technologists recognized by the IAC, and more broadly from my personal and professional experiences working in academic medical centers, private practices and large urban hospitals for the past 17 years after making a career-change from IT operations technical management in 2007.

We often hear about the need for interdisciplinary, multi-disciplinary approaches to identifying and treating vascular disease pathologies, and that need seems to keep growing every year. I look forward to more interdisciplinary cooperation by the SVU and will work to promote that. For example, the validation of the NVS credential by the IAC in January 2023 is itself a great example of an interdisciplinary achievement, because not only does earning the credential effectively raise the skill level of RVTs performing TCD and carotid exams, but it opens a long-needed pathway to our colleagues in neuromonitoring and critical care who want to utilize intracranial imaging and monitoring technology with a proper required credential.

Non-sonographers didn’t have a viable or recognized pathway to earning the RVT in their present positions and therefore couldn’t use TCD or ultrasound. Now they can realistically “learn on the job” under proper supervision leading to a recognized and proper credential. For the future of our field, we need to not only move with the advances in technology, but again we need to work with other interested organizations in maintaining the integrity and recognition of our vascular technologist credentialing.

When Dr. Ryan Hakimi and I learned on the eve of last year’s SVU conference that the SVU had taken the initiative to redress a wrong-headed decision by the ADA to push dental hygienists into performing carotid duplex exams along with a patient’s cleanings, we immediately worked to secure the support of our conference sponsoring organization, the ASN, to sign on to this very worthy cause in the name of quality patient care by properly credentialed technologists. These are modest, but important examples of what I view is the best kind of interdisciplinary work leading to the best patient care and use of diagnostic ultrasound technology. From my vantage point and present active participation in the IAC Vascular Testing Board of Directors and the IAC’s Research and Social Media committees and the AI taskforce, along with my role on the ASN’s board of directors as one of only two sonographers, I want to promote more of those cross-discipline, interorganizational cooperation efforts with the SVU.

This ranges from organizing training and education for sonographers and at the organizational level of fostering better credentialing while embracing the coming new technology. 3D volume, elastography and ultrafast vector flow imaging are commercially available, however they are still not widely dispersed enough, and training is limited. That should change soon though and we should help guide it. I believe there is also work for us with the exploding number of POCUS applications and the validation of them. I want to help the SVU to be a strong participant in shaping these coming developments.