I currently plan and execute communications for a team of more than 150 clinicians, scientists, and research staff in the Department of Radiology at NYU Langone Health and the Center for Advanced Imaging Innovation and Research at NYU Grossman School of Medicine.
Here are some of the projects I’ve owned or made significant contributions to. Each summary can be opened to show more detail.
Storytelling
I produce effective, engaging stories that grow, convert, and influence audiences ranging from the
general public to experts in specialized fields. A digital storytelling campaign I launched at NYU
Langone’s Center for Advanced Imaging Innovation and Research in the fall of 2022 nearly tripled the
center’s web audience during the first year.
Storytelling in my current role includes:
Writing stories about research discoveries, technological breakthroughs, and the people behind them.
Examples:
Collaborating with faculty members on persuasive storytelling for sophisticated, specialized audiences
such as NIH reviewers and academic promotion committees. See the grant writing section below for more
info.
Digital writing and design for SEO and social media. See cai2r.net and med.nyu.edu sections below, or
visit the research center’s
Twitter (X) or LinkedIn for examples.
Producing newsletters and writing email marketing campaigns.
I delivered a comprehensive website overhaul for the Center for Advanced Imaging Innovation and Research,
bringing the portal’s performance metrics and its more than 100 pages of content up to world-class
technical and editorial standards, and leading to 66 percent conversion growth in the first year (a durable gain sustained since).
Need
In 2020, the research center needed to replace its aged web portal, cai2r.net. The website represents the
organization’s mission, vision, and research to an audience of peer scientists, NIH reviewers, prospective
talent, and the public; it is also the main vehicle for sharing the research center’s open-source software,
data, and hardware resources.
We had a $0 budget, due to an institution-wide spending freeze prompted by the coronavirus pandemic, and I
was the only person on the project.
Solutions
I delivered a comprehensive redesign, rewrite, rebuild, and relaunch of the portal within one year.
At launch, the new site measured by Google’s Lighthouse audit scored:
100/100 in performance; up by 77
100/100 in accessibility; up by 8
100/100 in best practices; up by 27
100/100 in SEO; up by 18
Google metrics of page quality for the new cai2r.net website (left) and its predecessor.
User conversion jumped by 66 percent year-over-year, as measured by the number of human-verified
resource downloads.
The “Time to Interactive” metric dropped on the homepage from more than 16 seconds to less than 1.5
seconds for a simulated mobile device with a 3G connection, as evaluated by Google at web.dev/measure.
The site’s CO2 emissions dropped by 80 percent, according to an estimate by Website Carbon
Calculator at websitecarbon.com.
Other improvements include:
mobile-first design
streamlined navigation
dedicated research blog
automated scientific publication lists
extensive metadata for social sharing
schema markup for rich search results
custom functionality for verification and tracking of resource downloads
hidden, password-protected sections with confidential information for the research center’s external
science advisory board
Science Writing and Information Architecture for med.nyu.edu
I serve as lead science writer on NYU Langone’s digital presentation of radiology research and the
biomedical imaging PhD program on med.nyu.edu, a portal that showcases science and education at NYU
Grossman School of Medicine for an audience of peer researchers, prospective colleagues, doctoral and
postdoctoral trainees, and the general public.
Need
In 2019 and 2020, as part of an institution-wide digital transformation, NYU Langone sought to develop a new
presentation of its radiology department. The department ranks in the top 10 by NIH funding and operates a
dynamic research enterprise.
Solutions
Working with research leadership, faculty, and digital editors, I created information architecture and web
copy to present a large amount of complex information in a handful of SEO- and reader-friendly pages set in
concise, clearly structured, authoritative prose.
Page topics include:
mission, vision, and values
scientific investigations
technological advances and their clinical applications
artificial intelligence research
facilities and instrumentation
research partnerships
team culture
I also wrote the web presentation of the PhD training program in biomedical imaging and technology, aimed
primarily at prospective doctoral students.
Internal Communications for a Matrixed Research Team
In-house, I have driven team engagement and alignment with a communications strategy anchored by two complementary
products: an intranet and a weekly newsletter. Both vehicles have proven invaluable since the transition
to sustained remote work caused by the coronavirus pandemic.
Need
Around 2018, the imaging research enterprise at NYU Langone experienced rapid growth and turnover. These
conditions called for new and more efficient ways of distributing information vital to labs and individual
contributors. The research center also needed new and better ways of keeping its interdisciplinary,
cross-functional teams aligned.
Solutions
I created an internal information platform and an ongoing communication campaign.
Intranet
In 2019, I developed a high-quality, mobile-first intranet, called Radiology Research Wiki, which offers
always-on, up-to-date, curated information about shared resources, including:
available MRI systems
standard operating procedures
telework resources
presentation assets
grant-writing resources
recurring meetings
contacts responsible for particular research systems
The internal knowledge base has been a boon to efficiency, unburdening team members from having to seek
information and resources by emailing or calling around, and sparing many from having to repeatedly reply to
identical queries from different colleagues.
Radiology Research Weekly, an email newsletter, keeps an in-house audience of more than
200 informed and aligned. Issues are archived on the intranet for reference.
Weekly Newsletter
In January 2020, I launched a Monday newsletter titled Radiology Research Weekly, which briefs the
team on new honors, funding, publications, new and departing personnel, meetings and events, housekeeping
matters, and research center milestones.
Highlights:
in-house audience of more than 200 people involved in imaging research at NYU Langone
130+ weekly issues
76+ colleague profiles
high praise from recipients, who have called the newsletter “wonderful,” “incredible,” and “a godsend”
Reliable, informative, and concise, the Weekly is a quintessential leadership communication product
that tracks the pulse of the research enterprise.
Past issues are archived on the intranet, where they form a searchable repository of institutional memory.
Event Planning, Branding, and Campaigns
Working with the research center’s leadership, I grew and promoted the center’s brand through international
conferences and exhibits.
Need
There was a need to establish and cultivate the research center’s brand—virtually unknown at founding in late 2014—among its primary audience: the medical imaging research community.
Solutions
I cocreated international workshops that brought together hundreds of people under the center’s brand, and designed booth exhibits that took the brand to thousands at the field’s largest global expos.
i2i Workshop
In 2016, 2018, and 2023 I co-organized the research center’s first, second, and third editions of an international conference called the “i2i Workshop.” Collectively, the meetings drew nearly 800 participants affiliated with more than 100 institutions and earned recommend rates as high as 94 percent.
Guests and speakers included high-ranking medical device industry scientists, med-tech startup cofounders, current and former NIH officials, and academia’s leading imaging researchers.
My contributions included:
Developing a distinct visual identity for the workshop, integrated with the center’s identity and consistent with NYU Langone’s brand guidelines.
Creating and executing communication campaigns to market the events, manage abstract submissions, support day-of logistics, and gather feedback.
Planning abstract submission and registration pipelines.
Designing all digital and print collateral, including landing pages, digital screens, slide decks, award certificates, merchandise imprints, posters, etc.
Working with IT and in-house media services to record talks; creating on-brand intros and outros for the recordings.
A crowd around the center’s booth at the Paris 2018 meeting of the ISMRM, the community’s largest conference.
Booth Exhibits
I designed the center’s booth exhibits at the annual meetings of the International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine (ISMRM) in Honolulu (2017) and Paris (2018).
The ISMRM is the medical imaging research community’s largest conference, with an attendance of about 6,000, and combines scientific sessions—the traditional province of academic research—with a technical exhibition that showcases industry players and med-tech startups.
Our booth was the first such programming offered by a university at ISMRM’s technical exhibition in the expo’s 25-year history.
More than an innovative way to introduce the research center to a large audience, booth presence was also an opportunity to gather valuable feedback, which I later used to clarify the center’s messaging and strengthen its brand.
In 2018 I was part of a team that wrote a winning P41 grant proposal, securing $6.5 million in renewed
federal funding for the Center for Advanced Imaging Innovation and Research at NYU Grossman School of
Medicine. The application earned perfect scores from reviewers at the NIH.
The threshold for a successful P41 proposal is high. P41 sites, also known as National Centers for Biomedical Imaging and
Bioengineering, are considered innovation force multipliers for NIH-funded research. There are 24 such centers
nationwide.
Our center’s “competitive renewal” proposal comprised about 30 component drafts of varying lengths and
granularity, written by a dozen coauthors working together to craft a compelling argument about the team’s
scientific findings, technological advances, and organizational wherewithal to push the field of biomedical
imaging in new, promising directions. The final application ran over 600 pages long. My contributions included:
drafting sections of the proposal
working with faculty authors through rounds of substantive editing of component drafts
editing for rhetorical flow, clarity, and intended meaning
proofreading and copyediting for style, consistency, and impeccable grammar
I also contribute to a range of other grant-related products:
annual progress reports
white papers
custom information products for an external scientific advisory board
