Taylor Ariko received her BS in Chemical Engineering with a major in Biomedical Engineering at FAMU-FSU College of Engineering at Florida State University, graduating with Magna Cum Laude and Honors in the Major. She worked at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory (MagLab) during her junior and senior year under the mentorship of Dr. Samuel C. Grant PhD, gaining experience in high-field MR scanning and image processing. During her time at the MagLab, Taylor was involved in the Research Experience for Undergraduates program and defended an Undergraduate Honors Thesis on Diffusion Tensor Imaging of Neural Structural Connectivity in Transgenic Models of Alzheimer’s Disease and Ischemic Stroke Recovery.

Taylor received her PhD in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Miami, graduating with the Award of Academic Merit. She was awarded the Dean’s Fellowship from the Graduate School at the University of Miami and joined the Evelyn F. McKnight Brain Institute (EMBI) as a McKnight PhD Student. She worked under the dual mentorship of Dr. Tatjana Rundek MD, PhD and Dr. Weizhao Zhao PhD studying vascular and neurodegenerative biomarkers of cognitive decline and dementia in clinical populations and defended her PhD dissertation on Sociodemographic Variation in Cerebral Microstructure Across the Cognitive Decline Spectrum Using Advanced Diffusion MRI Modeling in patients from the 1Florida Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center.

Taylor is now an Assistant Professor at the Leonard M. Miller School of Medicine at University of Miami, where she works as an MRI Physicist in the Department of Radiology. Under the mentorship of Dr. Pradip Pattany PhD, Taylor provides clinical and technical expertise to support the operation and advancement of MRI technology. As an EMBI Collaborator, Taylor continues to research microstructural markers of brain health, aging, and cognitive decline using MRI.