• 2025.11 - Present

  San Francisco, CA, USA

  Staff Research Associate IV University of California, San Francisco SRA in Dr. Aaron Field’s Laboratory for Orthopaedic Biomechanics and Biotransport in the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery. Currently leading a new study on the development and validation of age-relative measures of biochemical intervertebral disc health (NIH R01AR085550):

  • Advanced MRI biomarker analysis
  • Meta-genome-wide association study (GWAS) analysis for developing polygenic risk score
  • Management of clinical research study data assets and databases

• 2019.09 - 2025.11

  San Francisco, CA, USA

  Staff Research Associate III University of California, San Francisco SRA in Dr. Aaron Field’s Laboratory for Orthopaedic Biomechanics and Biotransport in the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery. Previously part of Dr. Roland Krug's lab in the Department of Radiology and Biomedical Imaging. Researched characterization of chronic low back pain (Back Pain Consortium Research Program) through:

  • Automatic vertebral body and paraspinal muscle segmentation
  • Fat quantification of whole-body MRI
  • Statistical analysis of multi-omic data
  • Processing of whole genome sequencing data

• 2016.06 - 2017.08

  Dallas, TX, USA

  Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center Research fellow in Dr. Qinghua Liu’s lab in the Department of Biochemistry. Studied the molecular mechanism of odor-induced innate fear mediated by Trpa1 in mice:

  • Dissected and sectioned mouse brain tissue
  • Modified a PCR protocol to target and produce a restriction enzyme recognition site on Trpa1
  • Developed a method to selectively label bound proteins using biotinylation

• 2013.06 - 2014.08

  Dallas, TX, USA

  Research Intern University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center Intern in Dr. Zhigao Wang’s lab in the Department of Molecular Biology. Studied how the herb Citrullus colocynthis kills cancer cells through necrosis:

  • Developed a technique to detect phosphorylated proteins in Western blots

• 2018.08 - 2019.06

  San Francisco, CA, USA

  M.Sc. in Biomedical Imaging University of California, San Francisco Thesis: ‘Spectrome-AI: a Neural Network Framework for Inferring MEG Spectra’

• 2015.08 - 2018.06

  Cambridge, UK

  B.A. (Hons) in Natural Sciences University of Cambridge Dissertation: ‘Modelling calcium feedback mechanisms in light adaptation in vertebrate cone photoreceptors’

• 2026

  Best Paper Award

  International Society for the Study of the Lumbar Spine Intradiscal propionic acid levels in chronic low back pain patients with modic type 1 changes are associated with systemic immune cell activation

  
  Jan Devan*, Jiamin Zhou*, Po-Hung Wu, Noah B. Bonnheim, Conor O'Neill, Oliver Distler, Jeffrey C. Lotz, Thomas M. Link, Aaron J. Fields, Stefan Dudli
• 2026

  ISSLS Prize in Clinical Science

  International Society for the Study of the Lumbar Spine Data-driven classification of lumbar spine degeneration trajectories in chronic low back pain

  
  Terence P. McSweeney, Zehra Akkaya, Jiamin Zhou, Po-Hung Wu, Noah B. Bonnheim, Thomas M. Link, Jaro Karppinen, Jeffrey C. Lotz, Simo Saarakkala, Aaron J. Fields, Aleksei Tiulpin
• 2025

  ISSLS Young Investigator Travel Grant

  International Society for the Study of the Lumbar Spine Received $1000 USD for costs associated with attending the 2025 ISSLS Scientific Meeting in Atlanta
• 2023

  ISSLS Prize in Bioengineering Science

  International Society for the Study of the Lumbar Spine Age- and sex-related differences in lumbar intervertebral disc degeneration between patients with chronic low back pain and asymptomatic controls

  
  Noah B. Bonnheim, Ann A. Lazar, Anika Kumar, Zehra Akkaya, Jiamin Zhou, Xiaojie Guo, Conor O'Neill, Thomas M. Link, Jeffrey C. Lotz, Roland Krug, Aaron J. Fields

Full list of publications can be seen at Publications

Available upon request.