The Team
Meet our team. We are a diverse group of cognitive scientists and brain health experts, collaboratively advancing understanding, pioneering research, and innovating interventions for optimal neurological well-being.
Meet the Leadership
Charles Hillman, PhD
Director for the Institute of Cognitive & Brain Health
Michele & Anthony Manganaro Distinguished Professor
Department of Psychology, College of Science
Department of Physical Therapy, Movement & Rehabilitation Sciences, Bouvé College of Health Sciences
Hillman received his doctorate from the University of Maryland in 2000, and then began his career on the faculty at the University of Illinois, where he was a Professor in the Department of Kinesiology and Community Health for 16 years. He continued his career at Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts, where he currently holds appointments in the Department of Psychology and the Department of Physical Therapy, Movement, and Rehabilitation Sciences. He directs the Institute for Cognitive and Brain Health, which has the mission of understanding the role of lifestyle choices and behaviors on brain and cognition to maximize health and well-being, and promote the effective functioning of individuals across the lifespan.
Dr. Hillman has published ~300 refereed journal articles, 15 book chapters, and co-edited a text entitled Functional Neuroimaging in Exercise and Sport Sciences. He has served on an Institute of Medicine of the National Academies committee entitled Educating the Student Body: Taking Physical Activity and Physical Education to School, and was a member of the 2018 Health and Human Services Physical Activity Guidelines for American’s Scientific Advisory Committee. His work has been funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA), and several private sponsors. His work has been featured in the media including: CNN, National Public Radio, Good Morning America, Time, Newsweek, and the New York Times.
https://cos.northeastern.edu/people/charles-hillman/
https://bouve.northeastern.edu/bchs/directory/charles-hillman/
Laurel Gabard-Durnam, PhD
Associate Director for Education and Mentorship
Assistant Professor
Department of Psychology, College of Science
Dr. Laurel Gabard-Durnam is the director of PINE Lab and an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Northeastern University. She received a B.A. in Neurobiology from Harvard University and a Ph.D. in Psychology from Columbia University. She completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Boston Children’s Hospital prior to starting PINE Lab. Dr. Gabard-Durnam is a developmental cognitive neuroscientist whose research explores how different environments and neuroplasticity interact to shape brain and behavior development. She is interested in how typical environment-neuroplasticity interactions support healthy development, as well as how adverse environments or atypical neuroplasticity processes in neurodevelopmental disorders impact development. Using this framework, she aims to understand the developmental mechanisms driving healthy, resilient, or maladaptive outcomes across individuals. She works across, and compares, multiple socioemotional domains, including perception, language, and emotion regulation. Dr. Gabard-Durnam’s research program has been supported by funding from The National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Wellcome Leap Program, and the Autism Science Foundation.
Psyche Loui, PhD
Associate Director of Outreach
Associate Professor
Associate Professor of Creativity and Creative Practice
The neuroscience of music cognition, musical perception, pitch problems, singing, tone-deafness, music disorders and emotional impact of music and the voice, comprise much of Psyche Loui’s research and work. What happens in the brain when we create music? What gives some people a chill when they are moved by music? Can music be used to help with psychiatric and neurological disorders? These are questions that Loui tackles in the lab. Director of the MIND Lab (Music, Imaging and Neural Dynamics) at Northeastern University, Loui has published in the journals Current Biology, Journal of Neuroscience, Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, NeuroImage, Frontiers in Psychology, Current Neurology and Neuroscience Reports, Music Perception, Annuals of the New York Academy of Sciences, and others.
For her research on music and the brain, Loui has been interviewed by the Associated Press, CNN, WNYC, the Boston Globe, BBC Radio 4, NBC news and CBS radio, and the Scientist magazine.
Loui graduated the University of California, Berkeley with her PhD in Psychology (Specialization: Cognition, Brain and Behavior) and attended Duke University as an undergraduate graduating with degrees in Psychology and Music and a certificate in Neuroscience. She has since held faculty positions in Psychology, Neuroscience, and Integrative Sciences at Wesleyan University, and in Neurology at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School.
Jonathan Peelle, PhD
Associate Director Of Research
Professor
Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, Bouvé College of Health Sciences
Department of Psychology, College of Science
Dr. Peelle obtained a master’s degree in cognitive psychology and PhD in neuroscience from Brandeis University, with postdoctoral training at the University of Pennsylvania and the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit in Cambridge, England. His research is centered on the psychological and neural basis for human communication, particularly in the interaction between sensory and cognitive, and social factors. Because of the central role of spoken language in our everyday lives, understanding contributors to speech comprehension can provide clues as to how we can maintain and improve communication success throughout our lives.
https://bouve.northeastern.edu/bchs/directory/jonathan-peelle/
Faculty & Staff
Faculty
Aaron Seitz, PhD
Professor
Department of Psychology, College of Science
Department of Physical Therapy, Movement, and Rehabilitation Sciences, Bouvé College of Health Sciences
Department of Art + Design, College of Arts, Media, and Design
He holds a BA in mathematics (Reed College), PhD in computational neuroscience (Boston University), postdoc in systems neuroscience (Harvard Medical School), and was a Research Assistant Professor on human psychophysics and neuroimaging (Boston University).
Prior to Northeastern, he was a Professor at University of California, Riverside, where he was the director of the Brain Game Center for Mental Fitness and Well-being.
Seitz’s research program aims to understand mechanisms of cognitive processes and to apply this knowledge for public benefit. His academic training is diverse, with a BA in theoretical mathematics, PhD in computational neuroscience, postdoctoral work in systems neuroscience and neuroimaging. His research has led to new insights regarding the roles of reinforcement, attention, multisensory interactions, and different brain systems in learning, computational approaches to learning, translational neuroscience and perceptual/cognitive enhancement, among others. He utilize psychophysical, physiological, imaging, pharmacological, genetic, and computational methods to study cognitively diverse populations, ranging from individuals with cognitive deficits (due to disease, injury, or development) to neurotypical individuals, to specialists (e.g., radiologists, athletes). As Director of the Brain Game Center for Mental Fitness and Well-being, he uses ambulatory tools (e.g., that run on mobile phones and tablets) to reach larger, more diverse, and traditionally underserved/understudied populations, to understand cognitive diversity (broadly defined) and to create tools to measure function and to personalize training based upon individualized needs.
https://camd.northeastern.edu/faculty/aaron-seitz/
https://cos.northeastern.edu/people/aaron-seitz/
Alexandra Rodman, PhD
Assistant Professor
Department of Psychology, College of Science
Dr. Rodman is an incoming Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology starting July 2023. Dr. Rodman completed her PhD (Psychology, Clinical Science) and Postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard University. She completed her clinical internship at the Boston VA. She earned her BA in Clinical Psychology at Tufts University.
A Clinical Psychologist by training, her interdisciplinary research bridges the disciplines of developmental cognitive neuroscience and clinical science. Her work centers on the social worlds of teens, examining how social experiences interact with ongoing cognitive and brain development to increase risk for mental health problems during adolescence, a period of heightened vulnerability. More specifically, her research studies how social processing and behavior during adolescence are distinct from children and adults, whether such differences increase risk for mental health problems, and evaluates how social factors can be leveraged to promote resilience in the face of stress. Using advanced quantitative methods, her work integrates experimental and observational approaches, including novel behavioral tasks, neuroimaging (MRI), and digital phenotyping of real-world behavior via mobile phones. This work lays the foundation for future translational clinical research, ultimately aimed at improving the wellbeing of adolescents.
Aston McCullough, PhD
Assistant Professor
Department of Physical Therapy, Movement, and Rehabilitation Sciences, Bouvé College of Health Sciences
Department of Music, College of Arts, Media, and Design
Aston K. McCullough is an Assistant Professor at Northeastern University where he is a member of the core faculty in the Center for Cognitive & Brain Health, with appointments in the Department of Physical Therapy, Movement & Rehabilitation Sciences, the Department of Music, and an affiliate faculty appointment in the Khoury College of Computer Sciences. Prior to joining Northeastern University, Dr. McCullough was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Music & Dance and founding director of the National Endowment for the Arts Research Lab at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where he also held an appointment as an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering. Dr. McCullough completed his Ph.D. & M.Phil. degrees in Kinesiology at Columbia University; M.S., Applied Statistics, Columbia University Teachers College; M.A., Dance Education, New York University; B.A. Liberal Arts, Sarah Lawrence College; Professional Diploma, Dance Studies, Laban Dance Conservatoire. He completed his postdoctoral fellowship in the Department of Kinesiology in the School of Public Health & Health Sciences at UMass Amherst.
Dr. McCullough studies human activity in relation to health across the lifespan. He programs and evaluates methods for analyzing human activity and health-related signals within single and multi-person movement paradigms using sensors (e.g., accelerometers, 2D/3D cameras, EKG, and others). McCullough examines associations between wellness and dance exposures both quantitatively and qualitatively. His specific research areas include—movement & health, motion analysis, wearable sensors & 2D/3D camera systems, biometry, children & families, dance behavior. Dr. McCullough’s research has been funded by the National Endowment for the Arts, National Institutes of Health, and through generous support from foundations, and his laboratory has, or is currently, engaged in research partnerships with the Wolf Trap Institute, the Five College Dance consortium of Five Colleges, Inc., and Dance for PD® of the Mark Morris Dance Group.
Brie M. Reid, PhD
Assistant Professor
Department of Psychology, College of Science
Brie M. Reid, Ph.D., is a developmental psychobiologist and Assistant Professor at Northeastern University, with joint appointments in the Departments of Psychology and Health Sciences. She directs the REID Lab (Research on Early & Integrated Development, www.reid-lab.com) within the Institute for Cognitive and Brain Health. Dr. Reid’s research examines how early-life social and nutritional environments shape health and development. Her work focuses on the intersection of stress physiology, immune function, and nutrient metabolism, using behavioral and physiological approaches to uncover how early experiences become biologically embedded. Her goal is to identify pathways through which adversity influences long-term mental and physical health, with an emphasis on informing early interventions for vulnerable populations. She earned her Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology with a minor in Epidemiology from the University of Minnesota, supported by a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship. She completed postdoctoral training at Brown University’s Warren Alpert Medical School, where she collaborated with the Stress, Trauma, and Resilience (STAR) Initiative. Dr. Reid’s work is supported by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) through a K99/R00 Pathway to Independence Award, as well as by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) at NIH. She is a recipient of the Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation Award from the Society for Research in Child Development, and her research has been published in Brain, Behavior, & Immunity, Nutrients, and The Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry. Through interdisciplinary science, Dr. Reid aims to promote health equity and resilience across diverse developmental contexts.
David A. Sherman
Assistant Professor, Physical Therapy, Movement and Rehabilitation Center
Assistant Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering
Dr. Sherman is an assistant professor with a joint appointment in the Department of Physical Therapy, Movement and Rehabilitation Sciences and the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. He earned his DPT from Boston University in 2014, and his Ph.D. from the University of Toledo in 2022 and completed postdoctoral training at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and Boston University School of Medicine. David applies mobile brain imaging and wearable sensor technologies to investigate the root causes of chronic pain and motor impairments in orthopedic populations. His research develops and tests the efficacy of physical therapy treatments and rehabilitation technologies that restore neuromotor control and reduce the burden of disease through neuromodulation.
Gene Tunik, PhD
Associate Dean of Research and Innovation & Professor
Department of Physical Therapy, Movement, and Rehabilitation Sciences, Bouvé College of Health Sciences
Gene Tunik has a BS in Physical Therapy (Northeastern University) and PhD in Neuroscience (Rutgers University). He is a tenured Professor in the Department of Physical Therapy, Movement, and Rehabilitation Sciences and Associate Dean of Research and Innovation at the Bouvé College of Health Sciences. He directs the Laboratory for Movement Neuroscience, where research focuses on studying cognitive-motor interactions in health and disease, as well as improving human-robot interactions. Approaches in the lab include virtual reality, non-invasive brain stimulation, physiological recording, and measurement of movement.
https://bouve.northeastern.edu/bchs/directory/eugene-tunik/
https://coe.northeastern.edu/people/tunik-eugene/
Joshua Curtiss, PhD
Assistant Professor
Department of Applied Psychology, Bouvé College of Health Sciences
Dr. Curtis is currently an Assistant Professor at Northeastern University in the Applied Psychology Department, with an affiliation in the Psychology Department. He is also a Research Associate in the Psychiatry Department of Massachusetts General Hospital with the Depression Clinical and Research Program. His research interests pertain to leveraging state-of-the-art statistical approaches to address questions relating to the nosology and treatment of emotional disorders. Specifically, his research embraces statistical procedures that foster idiographic and precision medicine approaches to clinical psychology, such as intensive time-series research designs and machine learning approaches. These activities are complemented by his interests in philosophy of science.
Dr. Curtiss completed my postdoctoral fellowship in the Psychiatry Department at Harvard Medical School / Massachusetts General Hospital. He received his Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from Boston University under the mentorship of Dr. Stefan Hofmann, and completed his pre-doctoral internship in the CBT track at MGH/Harvard Medical School. Prior to pursuing his doctoral degree, he was a statistician and researcher in the clinical Psychology Department at Yale University for several years. Dr. Curtiss received his undergraduate degrees from Rutgers University in cognitive science, philosophy, and psychology.
Lauren Raine, PhD
Assistant Professor
Departments of Physical Therapy, Movement, and Rehabilitation Sciences & Medical Sciences, Bouvé College of Health Sciences
Lauren’s research interest is in the public health implications of cognition and brain health; specifically, the investigation of physical activity, fitness, and (excess) body mass on brain health and cognition in children. She has examined these relationships using behavioral and neuroimaging measures to study the influence of acute and chronic physical activity on cognition. She is also interested in the relationship between body composition and cognition, as the obesity epidemic continues to spread in children. She aims to gain a better understanding of the relationship between body composition and cognitive health that will lead to increased public health awareness about the inactivity levels of children and the vast health problems associated with these behaviors.
Matthew Yarossi, PhD
Assistant Professor
Department of Physical Therapy, Movement, and Rehabilitation Sciences, Bouvé College of Health Sciences
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, College of Engineering
Research Focus:
Movement neuroscience, motor physiology, clinical research, physiological signal processing, and biomechanics
https://coe.northeastern.edu/people/yarossi-mathew/
https://bouve.northeastern.edu/bchs/directory/mathew-yarossi/
Neha Gothe, PhD
Associate Professor
Departments of Physical Therapy, Movement & Rehabilitation Sciences & Applied Psychology, Bouvé College of Health Sciences
Dr. Gothe is an Associate Professor in the Departments of PTMRS and Applied Psychology at Northeastern University. Her research focuses on promoting physical activity, including non-traditional modes such as yoga, as a means to improve health, cognition and quality of life. She is known for her work on yoga for cognition and developed and led the first randomized trial examining the effects of yoga on cognitive function among older adults. Her research is funded by the National Institutes of Health where she also serves as a grant reviewer on various study sections. She has published extensively in the field of yoga and cognition and has been invited to presented at national and international conferences. At the Institute for Brain and Cognitive Health at NEU, Dr. Gothe mentors graduate and undergraduate students interested in pursuing careers in yoga, exercise, neurocognition and health research.
Peter Bex
Professor, Psychology
Peter Bex’s research uses cross-disciplinary approaches to study basic and clinical vision science. Current models of visual perception have been developed to understand behavior under a limited set of idealized laboratory conditions. However, we live in a dynamic and cluttered environment and move our eyes several times each second. Dr. Bex’s basic visual neuroscience research aims to extend models of sensory processing from laboratory settings to real world conditions. This involves the study of moving natural images that contain multiple objects, three-dimensional structure while observers make eye movements.
Dr. Bex’s translational clinical research uses behavioral and computational techniques to study the pathological processes in blinding eye diseases including Age-related Macular Disease, Glaucoma and Amblyopia. He aims to understand the bases and implications of these blinding eye diseases with the goal of developing efficient and sensitive methods for early diagnosis and to measure the presence and progression or remediation of vision loss. Treatment of many eye diseases with conventional ophthalmic techniques is of limited benefit, the Bex Lab therefore develops new technologies and novel therapeutic approaches that help to maximize residual visual function and promote the most effective rehabilitation.
Stephanie Noble, PhD
Assistant Professor
Department of Psychology, College of Science
Department of Bioengineering, College of Engineering
Dr. Noble focuses on creating tools to facilitate more precise human neuroscience inference and prediction. Her research lies at the intersection of data science, neuroscience, and open science. Additionally, her work has addressed open questions and introduced new paths forward to facilitate more reliable and valid neuroimaging studies.
Susan Whitfield-Gabrieli, PhD
Director of the Northeastern University Biomedical Imaging Center & Professor
Department of Psychology, College of Science
Susan Whitfield-Gabrieli is an American scientist, psychologist/neuroscientist, academic and researcher. She is a professor of psychology, the Founding Director of the Biomedical Imaging Center at Northeastern University, Researcher in the Department of Psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School and a Research Affiliate of McGovern Institute for Brain Research at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Whitfield-Gabrieli’s research is focused on the working of the human brain, its development from childhood through adult maturity, the brain’s working in neurodevelopmental and neuropsychiatric disorders, and the translation of neuroscience knowledge into treatments. She is involved in the development of neuroimaging analysis methods and software packages including CONN, REX, and ART.
https://cos.northeastern.edu/people/susan-whitfield-gabrieli/
Susanne Jaeggi, PhD
Professor & Principal Investigator at the Northeastern University Brain Game Center & Working Memory and Plasticity Lab
Department of Psychology, College of Science
Department of Applied Psychology, Bouvé College of Health Sciences
Department of Music, College of Arts, Media, and Design
Dr. Jaeggi is a Professor of Psychology and the Co-Director of the Brain Game Center & Working Memory and Plasticity Lab. As a Cognitive Neuroscientist and Experimental Psychologist, she has a broad interest in general processes of working memory and related higher cognitive functions, and within that domain, the investigation of cognitive training and transfer is one of her current major foci of research. She strives to determine what training regimens and training conditions result in the best transfer effects, investigate the underlying neural and cognitive mechanisms, and finally, investigate for what populations and individuals cognitive training is most effective.
Tim Morris, PhD
Assistant Professor
Departments of Physical Therapy, Movement, and Rehabilitation Sciences & Applied Psychology, Bouvé College of Health Sciences
Dr. Morris’s research is focused on the interplay between the brain and complex exercise behaviors, studying both how exercise can beneficially impact the brain and cognition following traumatic brain injury as well as applying computational approaches to study how the brain helps us engage in complex physical exercise behaviors. Approaches in his lab include structural and functional magnetic resonance imaging, EEG, noninvasive brain stimulation, physiological recordings and cognitive assessments.
https://bouve.northeastern.edu/directory/directory/timothy-p-morris/
Zhenghan Qi
Assistant Professor, Communication Sciences and Disorders
Dr. Qi is an assistant professor jointly appointed by the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders and the Department of Psychology.
Dr. Qi directs the Language Acquisition and Brain Laboratory (QLAB). Her research goal is to understand the neurobiological organization of language in the human brain, how that organization changes from childhood through adulthood, how it is disrupted in major neurodevelopmental language disorders, and how knowledge of that organization may enhance language learning and language intervention.
She uses behavioral and neuroimaging techniques to study the relationship between language learning, cognitive skills, and brain development in both children and adults.
Operations
Gregory Cloutier
Laboratory & Operations Manager
Greg is the Center Laboratory and Operations Manager within the Institute for Cognitive and Brain Health (CCBH). For the past 12 years he was the project manager for the Human Performance and Exercise Science Laboratory, in Bouvé College of Health Sciences and exercise physiologist for CCBH. Prior to coming to Northeastern, he was the Senior Research Coordinator for the Nutrition, Exercise Physiology, and Sarcopenia Laboratory, at Tuft’s Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging. At Tufts, he was involved in research investigating nutrition, exercise, and aging. Particularly in the areas of muscle, bone, and function on the gross and molecular level. Some of his most notable projects were bedrest studies with NASA Space Center, hormone replacement in older men, resistance training while having dialysis, and resistance training with whey protein supplementation in older men and women. In addition, he was involved in the Novartis study comparing muscle fiber and translation in young compared to older adults after eight weeks of heavy resistance training, and the IGNITE study at Northeastern University.
Greg’s education started at UMass Boston for his Undergraduate degree in Clinical Exercise Physiology and then pursued his Master’s in Public Health at Tufts Medical and at Northeastern University.
His research interests are in exercise and nutrition as interventions to attenuate declines in aging and inactivity with a special interest in “wellness” in a wide variety of groups.
Outside of Northeastern, Greg enjoys competing in triathlons, biking, trail running with his dogs, landscaping, and photography.
Henry Przybylowicz
Grants & Finance Manager
Henry Przybylowicz is the Grants and Financial Manager at The Institute for Cognitive and Brain Health providing Core faculty with both pre- and post-award management to support the research conducted within the Center. He graduated from The George Washington University in 2013 with a degree in Exercise Science. His previous experience includes rolls as a Research Administrator, Research Coordinator, and Research Technician.