Tommaso Di Ianni is an Assistant Professor in the Departments of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences and Radiology & Biomedical Imaging. He is the Director of the UCSF Basic Ultrasound Research Program and co-Director of the UCSF Focused Ultrasound in Neuroscience Program. His research focuses on developing ultrasound-based innovations for image-guided intervention in neurology and psychiatry.
Before joining UCSF, Dr. Di Ianni was a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University, specializing in ultrasound neuromodulation, functional ultrasound imaging, and image-guided targeted drug delivery. He holds a PhD in biomedical engineering from the Technical University of Denmark and an MSc degree (summa cum laude) in electrical engineering from the University of Bologna (Italy). Dr. Di Ianni has received a Stephen I. Katz Early Stage Investigator award from the National Institutes of Health, a New Investigator Award from the American Institute of Ultrasound in Medicine, and a Stanford School of Medicine Dean’s Postdoctoral Fellowship. He is a member and track lead of the Technical Program Committee of the IEEE International Ultrasonics Symposium.
Check the lab website for further information: https://diiannilab.ucsf.edu.
Honors and Awards
Stephen I. Katz Early Stage Investigator Research Project Grant, NIH, 2025
UCSF Catalyst Award, UCSF Innovation Ventures & Weill Institute for Neurosciences, 2024
PARC Fellowship, UCSF Pain and Addiction Research Center, 2024
Dean’s Postdoctoral Fellowship, Stanford University School of Medicine, 2019
New Investigator Award for Basic Science, American Institute of Ultrasound in Medicine, 2017
Publications
Grasso V, Tennyson J, Airan RD, Di Ianni T. Ketamine-induced static and dynamic functional connectivity changes are modulated by opioid receptors and biological sex in rats. Neuropsychopharmacology. 2025 Oct; 50(11):1695-1705.
Fan JM, Woodworth K, Murphy KR, Hinkley L, Cohen JL, Yoshimura J, Choi I, Tremblay-McGaw AG, Mergenthaler J, Good CH, Pellionisz PA, Lee AM, Di Ianni T, Sugrue LP, Krystal AD. Thalamic transcranial ultrasound stimulation in treatment resistant depression. Brain Stimul. 2024 Sep-Oct; 17(5):1001-1004.
Murphy KR, Farrell JS, Bendig J, Mitra A, Luff C, Stelzer IA, Yamaguchi H, Angelakos CC, Choi M, Bian W, DiIanni T, Pujol EM, Matosevich N, Airan R, Gaudillière B, Konofagou EE, Butts-Pauly K, Soltesz I, de Lecea L. Optimized ultrasound neuromodulation for non-invasive control of behavior and physiology. Neuron. 2024 Oct 09; 112(19):3252-3266.e5.
Di Ianni T, Ewbank SN, Levinstein MR, Azadian MM, Budinich RC, Michaelides M, Airan RD. Sex dependence of opioid-mediated responses to subanesthetic ketamine in rats. Nat Commun. 2024 Jan 30; 15(1):893.
Di Ianni T, Morrison KP, Yu B, Murphy KR, de Lecea L, Airan RD. High-throughput ultrasound neuromodulation in awake and freely behaving rats. Brain Stimul. 2023 Nov-Dec; 16(6):1743-1752.
Levinstein MR, Carlton ML, Di Ianni T, Ventriglia EN, Rizzo A, Gomez JL, Budinich RC, Shaham Y, Airan RD, Zarate CA, Bonaventura J, Michaelides M. Mu Opioid Receptor Activation Mediates (S)-ketamine Reinforcement in Rats: Implications for Abuse Liability. Biol Psychiatry. 2023 06 15; 93(12):1118-1126.
Di Ianni T, Airan RD. Deep-fUS: A Deep Learning Platform for Functional Ultrasound Imaging of the Brain Using Sparse Data. IEEE Trans Med Imaging. 2022 07; 41(7):1813-1825.
Wang JB, Di Ianni T, Vyas DB, Huang Z, Park S, Hosseini-Nassab N, Aryal M, Airan RD. Focused Ultrasound for Noninvasive, Focal Pharmacologic Neurointervention. Front Neurosci. 2020; 14:675.
Di Ianni T, Bose RJC, Sukumar UK, Bachawal S, Wang H, Telichko A, Herickhoff C, Robinson E, Baker S, Vilches-Moure JG, Felt SA, Gambhir SS, Paulmurugan R, Dahl JD. Ultrasound/microbubble-mediated targeted delivery of anticancer microRNA-loaded nanoparticles to deep tissues in pigs. J Control Release. 2019 09 10; 309:1-10.
Di Ianni T, Hansen KL, Villagomez Hoyos CA, Moshavegh R, Nielsen MB, Jensen JA. Portable Vector Flow Imaging Compared With Spectral Doppler Ultrasonography. IEEE Trans Ultrason Ferroelectr Freq Control. 2019 03; 66(3):453-462.
Di Ianni T, Villagomez Hoyos CA, Ewertsen C, Kjeldsen TK, Mosegaard J, Nielsen MB, Jensen JA. A Vector Flow Imaging Method for Portable Ultrasound Using Synthetic Aperture Sequential Beamforming. IEEE Trans Ultrason Ferroelectr Freq Control. 2017 11; 64(11):1655-1665.
Di Ianni T, Hemmsen MC, Llimos Muntal P, Jorgensen IH, Jensen JA. System-Level Design of an Integrated Receiver Front End for a Wireless Ultrasound Probe. IEEE Trans Ultrason Ferroelectr Freq Control. 2016 11; 63(11):1935-1946.
Di Ianni T, De Marchi L, Perelli A, Marzani A. Compressive sensing of full wave field data for structural health monitoring applications. IEEE Trans Ultrason Ferroelectr Freq Control. 2015 Jul; 62(7):1373-83.
Perelli A, Di Ianni T, Marzani A, De Marchi L, Masetti G. Model-based compressive sensing for damage localization in Lamb wave inspection. IEEE Trans Ultrason Ferroelectr Freq Control. 2013 Oct; 60(10):2089-97.
