Elyssa McMaster

I am a PhD student in Electrical and Computer Engineering at Vanderbilt University, affiliated with the Medical-image Analysis and Statistical Interpretation (MASI) Lab and the Vanderbilt Institute for Surgery and Engineering (VISE).

I earned my BA in Computer Science and Art History with Honors and a minor in Medieval and Renaissance Studies from Washington and Lee University in 2022. My senior thesis, titled Florence + The Machine: A Computational Approach to Florentine Liturgical Manuscript Illuminations from the Late Trecento, applied deep learning to analyze a dataset of religious images produced in the same area and period. This research evaluated the neural network's performance on a small dataset and explored methodological and ethical considerations at a pivotal moment in the convergence of technology and the humanities. I continued my work on this project in Florence through the Fulbright U.S. Student Program from 2022 to 2023.

At Vanderbilt, I engage in research on brain connectivity while also contributing to the analysis of images of mummified remains.