Dr. Cieslak has worked on high-resolution diffusion-weighted MRI (dMRI) for nearly 10 years. While diffusion tensor imaging became the de Facto method for acquiring and analyzing dMRI, his work focused on q space imaging methods such as Diffusion Spectrum Imaging, Generalized Q-sampling Imaging and High Angular Resolution Diffusion Imaging. Dr. Cieslak developed methods for quantifying deterministic tractography [a], applied it to developmental stuttering [b] and worked with others to do basic methods research on the impact of analysis pipeline choices on human connectome models [c,d]. More recent work has focused on developing interpretable geometry-based methods for quantifying white matter structure [e,f], including developing an tractography method that performs comparably to current methods but is 7e6 times faster [g].

Dr. Cieslak's research in psychology has focused on how the brain interacts with the autonomic nervous system during stressful or high-stakes tasks. developed and maintains software for non-invasively measuring event-related changes in sympathetic drive [h] and working to enable the recording of these signals during fMRI [i].

a. Cieslak, M., & Grafton, S. T. (2014). Local termination pattern analysis: a tool for comparing white matter morphology. Brain Imaging and Behavior, 8(2), 292-299.
b. Cieslak, M., Ingham, R. J., Ingham, J. C., & Grafton, S. T. (2015). Anomalous white matter morphology in adults who stutter. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 58(2), 268-277.
c. Wei, K., Cieslak, M., Greene, C., Grafton, S. T., & Carlson, J. M. (2017). Sensitivity analysis of human brain structural network construction. Network Neuroscience, 1(4), 446-467.
d. Greene, C., Cieslak, M., & Grafton, S. T. (2018). Effect of different spatial normalization approaches on tractography and structural brain networks. Network Neuroscience, 2(3), 362-380.
e. Hallgrímsson, H. T., Cieslak, M., Foschini, L., Grafton, S. T., & Singh, A. K. (2018). Spatial coherence of oriented white matter microstructure: Applications to white matter regions associated with genetic similarity. NeuroImage, 172, 390-403.
f. Sun, J., Cieslak, M., Grafton, S., & Suri, S. (2015, November). A reeb graph approach to tractography. In Proceedings of the 23rd SIGSPATIAL International Conference on Advances in Geographic Information Systems (p. 58). ACM.
g. Cieslak, M., Brennan, T., Meiring, W., Volz, L. J., Greene, C., Asturias, A., ... & Grafton, S. T. (2018). Analytic tractography: A closed-form solution for estimating local white matter connectivity with diffusion MRI. NeuroImage, 169, 473-484.
h. Cieslak, M., Ryan, W. S., Babenko, V., Erro, H., Rathbun, Z. M., Meiring, W., ... & Grafton, S. T. (2018). Quantifying rapid changes in cardiovascular state with a moving ensemble average. Psychophysiology, 55(4), e13018
i. Cieslak, M., Ryan, W. S., Macy, A., Kelsey, R. M., Cornick, J. E., Verket, M., ... & Grafton, S. (2015). Simultaneous acquisition of functional magnetic resonance images and impedance cardiography. Psychophysiology, 52(4), 481-488.