Talk: Meandering paths across the academic landscape

Dr. Bassett is most well known for her work blending neural and systems engineering to identify fundamental mechanisms of cognition and disease in human brain networks. She received a B.S. in physics from Penn State University and a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Cambridge, UK as a Churchill Scholar, and as an NIH Health Sciences Scholar. Following a postdoctoral position at UC Santa Barbara, she was a Junior Research Fellow at the Sage Center for the Study of the Mind. She has received multiple prestigious awards, including American Psychological Association's ‘Rising Star’ (2012), Alfred P Sloan Research Fellow (2014), MacArthur Fellow Genius Grant (2014), Early Academic Achievement Award from the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (2015), Harvard Higher Education Leader (2015), Office of Naval Research Young Investigator (2015), National Science Foundation CAREER (2016), Popular Science Brilliant 10 (2016), Lagrange Prize in Complex Systems Science (2017), Erdos-Renyi Prize in Network Science (2018). She is the author of more than 200 peer-reviewed publications, which have garnered over 15500 citations, as well as numerous book chapters and teaching materials. She is the founding director of the Penn Network Visualization Program, a combined undergraduate art internship and K-12 outreach program bridging network science and the visual arts.  Her work has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, the Army Research Office, the Army Research Laboratory, the Office of Naval Research, the Department of Defense, the Alfred P Sloan Foundation, the John D and Catherine T MacArthur Foundation, the Paul Allen Foundation, the ISI Foundation, and the University of Pennsylvania. 

Talk: Success and failure in academia

Melanie Stefan is a lecturer in computational neurobiology at the University of Edinburgh (UK) and adjunct assistant professor at Zhejiang University-University of Edinburgh Joint Institute in Haining (China). She originally studied biology and mathematics in her native Austria and completed her PhD at the European Bioinformatics Institute in Cambridge (UK). After that, she worked as a postdoctoral scholar in Japan and the US, before joining the University of Edinburgh in 2015. This all sounds way more impressive than it actually is, because it only lists the things that happened to work out, not the many (many!) failures along the way.

Dr. Adeel Razi and his lab develop data science techniques for brain mapping in health and disease. His research interest is in modelling complex, multi-scale, network dynamics of brain structure and function using neuroimaging. He, with Professor Karl Friston, introduced a new dynamic causal model (DCM) for resting state functional MRI which is now in wide use. Dr. Razi is a Senior Research Fellow, ARC DECRA Fellow and Principal Investigator of recently established Computational and Systems Neuroscience Laboratory at the Monash Institute of Cognitive & Clinical Neuroscience and Monash Biomedical Imaging at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. He is an Honorary Senior Research Associate at the Wellcome Centre for Human Neuroimaging of University College London (UCL) where he also worked from 2012 to 2018. He received the B.E. degree in Electrical Engineering from the N.E.D. University of Engineering & Technology, Pakistan, the M.Sc. degree in Communications Engineering from the University of Technology Aachen (RWTH), Germany, and the Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of New South Wales, Australia in 2012.

Alex Fornito completed his Clinical Masters and PhD in 2007 in the Departments of Psychiatry and Psychology at The University of Melbourne before undertaking Post-Doctoral training in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Cambridge, UK. He is currently a Professor of the Monash Institute of Cognitive and ClinicalNeurosciences at Monash University, Melbourne, Australia, an Australian Research Council Future Fellow, and co-Principal Investigator of the Brain and Mental Health Lab. Alex’s research concentrates on developing new imaging techniques for mapping brain connectivity and applying these methods to shed light on brain function in health and disease. This work involves combining techniques from neuroscience, psychology, psychiatry, physics, mathematics and genetics to understand nervous systems in a diverse array of species. A major emphasis of his research concerns understanding foundational principles of brain organization and their genetic basis; characterizing brain connectivity disturbances in psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia; and mapping how brain networks dynamically reconfigure in response to changing task demands.

B.Sc., Human Genetics and Neuroscience (McGill University); M.Sc., Cross-species genomics (Génome Québec Innovation Centre, McGill University); Ph.D., Neuroscience/Proteomics (Montreal Neurological Institute, McGill University); Postdoctoral Fellow (Université de Montréal & Centre de Recherche, Institut Universitaire de Gériatrie de Montréal)

Dr. AmanPreet Badhwar holds a PhD from Montreal Neurological Institute - McGill University, where she integrated brain imaging, quantitative proteomics and measures of neurovascular coupling to study the interaction of neuronal and neurovascular damage in Alzheimer’s disease models, and the impact of therapeutics on these two components. Supported by a Banting and Best Doctoral Award from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), she also received the CIHR Age+ Prize, which recognizes excellence in research on aging, for one of the publications arising from her thesis work. Dr. Badhwar is now a postdoctoral fellow at the Institut universitaire de gériatrie de Montréal (IUGM), Université de Montréal, where her current research focus is to determine how aspects of brain connectivity could be developed as biomarkers of progression in Alzheimer’s disease. Her scientific vision is to cut across intellectual silos and integrate multiple streams of data to answer big questions in Alzheimer’s disease research. She held a prestigious fellowship from the Alzheimer Society of Canada, and is currently supported by a postdoctoral fellowship from CIHR. She is a member of the Biomarker team of the Canadian Consortium on Neurodegeneration in Aging (CCNA), president of the CCNA Trainee Society, Chair-Elect of the newly formed OHBM Art and Science SIG, and past Chair of the OHBM Student and Postdoc SIG (OHBM, 2016-2017). Dr. Badhwar is a strong promoter of inclusiveness in science and is a member of the OHBM Diversity and Gender Committee. Dr. Badhwar is also engaged in public outreach through her involvement as an editor with the OHBM Communications Committee, as well as her artistic works, where the topics of brain organization, plasticity, and memory are recurrent. She has held a number of expositions of her work integrating science and art, and has been a winner in The Neuro Bureau Brain-Art Competition in multiple years, and has recently designed the cover of an issue in NeuroImage.

Daniel Margulies is a tenured researcher with the Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS) in Paris. His research investigates the organization of large-scale brain networks, primarily through the analysis of intrinsic activity as measured with fMRI. Using these approaches he has mapped subregions within complex cortical areas, conducted cross-species comparative neuroanatomical studies, and related variation in these networks to phenotypic differences across individuals. His current research addresses the emergence of network topography and its relationship to cortical structure. Margulies previously led the Neuroanatomy & Connectivity Research Group at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig. He has worked at NYU and Humboldt University, and was awarded the Otto Hahn Medal for his doctoral dissertation (2010) and the Young Investigator Award from the Organization for Human Brain Mapping (2018). 

Daniele Marinazzo is Associate Professor at the Department of Data Analysis of the University of Ghent. He obtained his Master Degree in Physics in 2001 and his PhD in Physics in 2007 from the University of Bari, Italy. His main area of expertise concerns methodological and computational aspects of neuroscience research. His research has always been interdisciplinary, being a physicist who has always worked side by side with clinical and experimental neuroscientists, even performing electrophysiology experiments himself, on rats and cats during his postdoc at CNRS in Paris (2008-2011).  His research group studies new techniques for the analysis of physiological data rooted in statistical physics and dynamical systems, with a particular focus on retrieving brain connectivity form the analysis of neuroimaging data. He is involved in active collaborations with theoretical and experimental groups in Belgium and abroad. He teaches techniques of neuroimaging data analysis. He is a member of international consortia for advancing cooperation with the South (VLIR-Cuba) and training (111 project-China). He regularly organizes workshops, conferences and journal special issues around connectivity methods and their applications to neuroscience, as well as hackhatons and open science initiatives. Daniele Marinazzo is editor of PLOS One, Network Neuroscience, PLOS Computational Biology, Brain Topography, and Neuron, Behavior, Data Analysis, and Theory, and referee for many journals in the field of neuroscience, applied physics and mathematics.

After receiving a Ph.D. in cognitive neuroscience from the psychology department at UCLA in 2006, Dr. Uddin completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Child Study Center at NYU. For several years she worked as a faculty member in Psychiatry & Behavioral Science at the Stanford School of Medicine. She joined the psychology department at the University of Miami in 2014. Within a cognitive neuroscience framework, Dr. Uddin’s research combines functional connectivity analyses of resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging data and structural connectivity analyses of diffusion tensor imaging data to examine the organization of large-scale brain networks supporting executive functions. Her current projects focus on understanding dynamic network interactions underlying cognitive inflexibility in neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism. Dr. Uddin’s work has been published in the Journal of Neuroscience, Cerebral Cortex, JAMA Psychiatry, Biological Psychiatry, PNAS, and Nature Reviews Neuroscience. She was awarded the Young Investigator award by the Organization for Human Brain Mapping in 2017.

Dr. Greicius is an Associate Professor in the Department of Neurology and Neurological Sciences at the Stanford University School of Medicine. He is the medical director of the Stanford Center for Memory Disorders and the principal investigator of the Functional Imaging in Neuropsychiatric Disorders (FIND) Lab. His research uses imaging, genetics, and imaging genetics to better understand Alzheimer’s disease from the level of molecular pathways to large-scale distributed brain networks and behavior.

Ms. Preuss is a certified Project Management Professional, serving as a co-Principal Investigator on a Small Business Innovation Research grant; a U24 Cooperative Agreement, funded by the NationalInstitutes of Health. In these capacities, she leads the 2012 HHSInnovates and 2009 Exellence.gov award winning, NeuroImaging Tools and Resources Collaboratory (NITRC).Ms. Preuss is also anInvestigator on the training core of ReproNim, University of Massachusetts’ Center for Reproducible Neuroimaging Computation.Ms. Preuss is a member of the NIH Study Section onSmall Business Innovation Research/Small Business Technology Transfer Panel B: Computational,Modeling, and Biodata Management (2017/18 ZRG1 IMST-K (14)).With over 20 years managing US government funded contracts, Nina has an MBA in InternationalBusiness Marketing from The George Washington University and a BA in Business Management from Goucher College.

Dr. Patrick Britz is the CEO & President of Brain Vision LLC and CEO of Brain Vision Solutions. He is also Shareholder at Brain Products GmbH. He holds a Ph.D. degree in Biopsychology and worked on combining EEG and fMRI as well as on the interaction of emotion and attention. During his Ph.D., he started working for Brain Products GmbH as a scientific consultant and was offered to go to North America to work for Brain Vision LLC. From beginning as a Scientific Consultant, Patrick soon took over more responsibilities and is since 2013 is the President of Brain Vision LLC and since 2017 is the President of Brain Vision Solutions Inc. in Canada.

Brain Vision LLC is the distribution partner for companies of all sizes from academic startup companies to multinational concerns. The partners include Brain Products, NIRx, CGX (Cognionics), EasyCap and CREmedical to name a few. Brain Vision LLC provides solutions to the leading institutes, minds, and companies in North America to drive the most innovative research. Dr. Patrick Britz’s role is also to drive innovation so Brain Vision can offer the solutions you as a customer want to use in the future. Dr. Patrick Britz perfected the art of predicting where the science will go next.

Dr. Patrick Britz is a committed supporter of the mentoring program and knows there are great options outside academia. Dr. Patrick Britz sees on average 200 applications a year from scientists that want to switch to the industry. He is looking forward to giving insights, tips, and tricks on how to excel at this important step.

Prof. Goebel is a full professor for Cognitive Neuroscience in the psychology department of Maastricht University. He is the founding director of the Maastricht Brain Imaging Centre (M-BIC) and the driving force of the recently established ultra-high field imaging center housing 3, 7 and 9.4 Tesla human MRI scanners. He is also team leader of the “Modeling and Neuroimaging” group at the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience in Amsterdam. In both institutes he combines functional brain imaging with neural network modelling to advance our understanding of brain function at multiple levels of organization.

From 2006, he is the Research Director of the FPN Maastricht Research Institute together with Peter de Weerd and he served the faculty board as head of research and innovation. From 2006-2008 he served as chair of the Organization for Human Brain Mapping. He received funding for basic and translational neuroscience research including a prestigious Advanced Investigators Grant from the European Research Council (2011 - 2016) and several grants from the Human Brain Project (2014-2020). He is also founder of the company Brain Innovation BV that produces free and commercial software for neuroimaging data analysis and clinical applications (see brainvoyager.com). In 2014 he has been selected as member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2017 he has been selected as member of Leopoldina, the German National Academy of Science.

Dr. Bookheimer holds the Joaquin Fuster Chair in Cognitive Neuroscience and is Distinguished Professor in the Dept. of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and the Department of Psychology. She is a clinical neuropsychologist whose work has spanned both basic research and clinical practice. Her experimental expertise includes structural and functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (sMRI, fMRI), positron emission tomography (PET), sodium Amytal examinations (Wada tests) and intraoperative electrocortical stimulation mapping (ESM), as well as classical neuropsychological approaches, applied across a range of neuropsychiatric disorders. She has been active in functional imaging since the inception of functional MRI in the early 1990s, and has over 240 publications in brain imaging. Dr. Bookheimer is past president of the Organization for Human Brain Mapping and Chair of the OHBM Scientific Advisory Board.