Dr. Chakhoyan is the Assistant Professor of Research in the department of Physiology and Neuroscience at the Zilkha Neurogenetic Institute in the Keck School of Medicine at USC. He is involved in different ongoing research projects in the Zlokovic lab. His day-to-day activity includes research design, implementation of innovative methods for human and mouse brain MRI/PET image acquisition, post-processing, analyze and result interpretation. His current research direction and scope of work in Project 1 within the Program Project “Vascular Contribution to Dementia and Genetic Risk Factors for Alzheimer’s Disease (NIH/NIA:1P01AG052350-05)” and the associated sister grant “Vascular Contribution to Dementia and Amyloid and Tau Lesions in APOE4 Carriers (Alzheimer’s Association 008369-00001) led by Drs Zlokovic and Toga is to measure the poorly understood interplay between blood-brain barrier permeability (quantified by MRI), amyloid and tau accumulation (quantified by PET), vascular (small vessel disease, hypertension, diabetes, smoking) and genetic risk factors (Apolipoprotein E4) that is a major risk factor for Alzheimer’s disease. A key technical challenge is the implementation of early MRI/PET biomarkers that can predict disease progression, which helps us to identify potential targets for intervention and improve risk prediction.