Gari Eberly

Gari Eberly is a graduate student in medical engineering and medical physics designing non-invasive endoscopic platforms to record neuronal activity from soft, motile peripheral organs including the colon and uterus. Her research addresses a critical gap: current methods cannot longitudinally study enteric nervous system dynamics in physiological and pathological conditions without invasive surgery. She designed flexible multicore fiber endoscopes with cellular-resolution imaging and developed MATLAB-based image analysis pipelines that perform motion correction and artifact removal, enabling quantitative neural activity analysis despite gastrointestinal motion. To complement this approach, she engineered wireless optical probes combining microscale LEDs and photodetectors for recordings in awake, behaving animals. Her work demonstrates how enteric neuron sensitivity changes during inflammatory insult and recovery. As a MathWorks Fellow, Gari will expand validation workflows and extend these technologies to clinical colonoscopy systems. Her research holds the promise to transform diagnosis of gastrointestinal nervous system abnormalities.