Executive Board
Julia Hall
Vice President
Boston, USA
Julia Hall (she/her) is a research assistant in a neuroimaging laboratory at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts. Her research focuses on using fMRI to explore the relationship between mood disorders, eating behaviors, and stress.
Her areas of interest include the impact of diet and lifestyle on mental health, reward/motivation and decision-making, the impact of trauma on health, and the mechanisms underlying generational trauma.
Julia has previously served as the Project Manager for the MGH Center for Law, Brain and Behavior, and was a research assistant in an eye-tracking cognitive neuroscience lab as an undergraduate. Her passion for teaching has also led her to work as an elementary school substitute teacher, and an orientation leader.
Julia is passionate about making science accessible, especially to young, eager learners. With NeurON, she is excited to help bolster youth’s awareness of- and interest in health and neuroscience. In her free time, Julia enjoys baking, hiking, and watercolor painting.
Elisenda Bueichekú, Ph.D.
Content Editor and Media Relations
Valencia, Spain
Dr. Elisenda Bueichekú is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Neuropsychology and Neuroimaging Group at Universitat Jaume I (Spain) and in the Gordon Center for Medical Imaging at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital. Her research focuses on mapping large-scale human functional brain networks to describe psychological processes such as sensory-motor integration, cognitive control and attention mechanisms. Dr. Bueichekú has regularly taught seminars and laboratory lectures on neuroanatomy and neuroscience, has served as thesis advisor for bachelors and masters candidates, and as a tutor for novice university lecturers.
As part of the Neuroscience Outreach Network, she hopes to bring the latest network neuroimaging findings closer to a young public, translate science into an accessible language for all ages, and most importantly, help make neuroscience attractive to the youngest. In her free time, she loves playing sports, practicing landscape photography and teaching herself how to play the piano. When possible, she travels abroad to learn different cultures and lose herself in nature while hiking.
Niranjana Srinivasa Ragavan
Content Editor and Media Relations
Chennai, India
Gowri Somasekhar
Content Editor - Health & The Brain
Arizona, USA
Gowri Somasekhar is a 2nd year graduate student in the Neuroscience Department at the University of Arizona. Her research interest is in system and cognitive neuroscience with a focus on adaptive behavior and sensory-motor integration. She is passionate about science communication, outreach and making science accessible and inclusive.
In the past, she has worked with different outreach groups and NGOs as an educator for K-12 students. With NeurON, she hopes to continue sharing her passion for neuroscience, physiology, behavior and data science with a global community. She hopes to expand science education and teaching in multiple languages and through different mediums. In her free time, she enjoys spending time outdoors, hiking, reading, making illustrations and learning about nature.
Elliot Eva C. Ping
Content Editor and Media Relations
Ohio, USA
"Elliot" Eva C. Ping (she/they) is the Lab Manager of the Wagner Social Cognitive Neuroscience Lab at The Ohio State University. She is interested in the neuroscience of communication, especially online and political communication, and how this research can be used to inform better law and policy. She earned her B.S. in Neuroscience, minoring in the History of Science, from Ohio State University.
Elliot is passionate about science for the public good. Her previous experience includes teaching teens and tweens how to use digital media technology at the Columbus Metropolitan Library, tutoring STEM topics at after-school programs, volunteering with Code for America, and founding The NeuroLaw Group at Ohio State. With NeurON, she wants to help students foster confidence in STEM subjects and help them notice ways that science enriches all of our lives. In her free time, she likes to dance ballet, read books in her garden, and play music with her friends.
Bikram Khastgir
Content Editor : NeuroTech
Bengaluru, India
Bikram is currently working as an Associate Manager in Analytics at MiQ, where he works on technologies to analyze behavioral trends in markets. An alumni of IIM Bangalore, he has worked at Accenture Technology Labs in the field of Natural Language Processing and Machine Learning, in domains including healthcare and retail.
Bikram has previously volunteered for initiatives led by Accenture and the United Nations. Most recently, he worked with the PathCheck foundation, an MIT spin-off that builds privacy-first contact tracing and case management solutions for COVID-19. As part of NeurON, he aims to continue to help make technology accessible for all. In his free time, he enjoys playing his guitar and reading fiction.
Komal Kampasi
Content Editor : NeuroTech
San Francisco, USA
Dr. Komal Kampasi is a Research and Development Engineer in Neurotechnology and currently works as Member of Research Staff at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Her research focuses on the design of implantable neural interfaces or brain machine interfaces that communicate with the nervous system to restore lost functions and can enhance our understanding of the human brain. Komal is a part of various outreach initiatives which focus on creating neuroscience and mental health awareness at grassroots levels, especially amongst the youngest and underserved communities.
As a part of NeurON, she hopes to make neuroscience learning accessible to all and use its power to bring socially relevant changes. In her free time, she enjoys taking road trips and exploring lesser-known sights of her destination, with a particular fondness for culture, history and archaeology. She loves to garden, hike in nature and live sustainably.
Affiliates
Shweta Prasad
Delhi, India
Shweta Prasad is a 3rd year undergraduate at Ashoka University where she is pursuing a Computer Science major and a Biology minor. She studies acoustic call pattern production and recognition in bush crickets in K.Bittu’s Neuroethology lab. Her broad areas of interest include animal behavior, decision theory, reinforcement learning and sensorimotor control. She believes science is for everyone, and that it is the job of people in science to make it accessible to anyone who desires to partake in it. She is the co-founder of Diverseneuro.org, an ongoing collaborative research endeavor that aims to study the current status of diversity and inclusiveness within the neurosciences in the hopes of informing administrative policy-making within the scientific community.
In choosing to work with the Neuroscience Outreach Network, Shweta hopes to learn how she can spread the unbridled joy of learning about animals, brains, animals without brains, brains without animals and how computers help us along the way. In her free time, she likes watching insects or the sky, cycling, hiking, writing sporadically, and making music.
Polina Turishcheva
Tatarstan, Russia
Polina Turishcheva is a 3rd-year bachelor student at Innopolis University (Computer Science with Data Science major ‘22). Her scientific interests include computational neuroscience, digital signal processing, EEG, fMRI, and functional connectivity. Her most recent conference paper investigated how mindfulness may improve performance in software development using EEG to estimate a programmer’s state and productivity. Polly served as a math teacher during the two week-long Olympiad schools (2019 and 2020) organized by Innopolis University, and has experience developing online lectures for high school students regarding the path toward academia.
With NeurON, she hopes to learn and share best practices in science outreach. Polly is also interested in encouraging students to pursue an academic path, with an emphasis on the idea that while science may be hard, it is also interesting - it is never too early or too late to start doing science. Polly is fond of salsa/bachata dancing, reading, and communicating with people from different cultures.
Franco Ferrante
Buenos Aires, Argentina
Franco Ferrante is a 5th year Bachelors of Biomedical Engineering student at Universidad Favaloro, Buenos Aires, Argentina. He has been teaching programming subjects at the same University since 2018. His interests involve computational neuroscience, machine learning and fMRI, EEG and iEEG signal processing. He participated in the IEEE Teacher in Service Program, which seeks to bring technology closer to children. Looking for his home in science, he has worked with blood pressure signals in sheep at IMETTYB LABIO, and for a behavioral neuroscience and game theory project at UTDT.
Franco believes that latent social injustice factors play a particularly negative role in early stages of human development, with negative effects for cognition perhaps related to a lower number of future opportunities. With NeurON, Franco wants to help widely disseminate the importance of brain-care to young children and inspire the next generation of law and policy-makers. He additionally wishes to learn how diversity in other people's experiences improve science outreach. In his free time, Franco likes to cook, play ping-pong and play video games.
Mohit Jaiswal
Pune, India
Mohit Jaiswal (he/him) is a second-year bioinformatics masters student at the Bioinformatics Centre, Savitribai Phule Pune University, Pune, India. He is interested in interdisciplinary sciences, currently investigating the presence and application of the Braess Paradox in complex ecological networks and compensatory perturbation in food-web networks at the Centre for Ecological Sciences, IISc, Bangalore. Mohit serves as Coordinator of External Affairs for the Student Interest Group in Neuroscience, SIGN, a young community exposing different facets of Neuroscience to k-college students. He also volunteers for the PAKSH project, a networking and leadership platform for South Asian women in STEMM. With NeurON, Mohit hopes to extend resources and support for students in every classroom and home. He fosters a spirit of openness, inclusivity, and transparency in science and strives for every student to feel the thrill of neuroscience, something he first felt in high-school and hasn't stopped since. In his free time, he likes to walk and explore unknown roads and places, illustrate and play video games.
Alice Schwarze, Ph.D.
Washington, USA
Alice Schwarze is a postdoctoral research scholar at the Department of Biology and the University of Washington. Her research focuses on mathematical modeling of networked systems including natural and artificial neural networks. She has participated in several outreach activities including Skype a Scientist, teaching at Mensa Youth Camps and a Royal Institution Masterclass.
Alice is excited to participate in NeurON to encourage young minds to use math and data science to make sense of complicated things like our brains. When not doing research or outreach, Alice likes to draw, read fiction, or go hiking and birding.
Abdullah Iqbal
Sheffield, UK
Abdullah is a graduate of the Biomedical Sciences program at the University of Sheffield, and is an incoming Neuroscience MS of Research at the University of Leeds. Abdullah has a love for understanding the brain and how it works. Especially novel theories for the etiology of neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's disease. Other major areas of interest include the role of glial cells, neuro-epigenetics, and 3D models of the brain for in silico drug discovery. For the past 2 years, he has regularly tutored with Action Tutoring, helping to improve grades of underachieving and minority pupils. He has experienced the effect of nutrition and social interaction on the mind, and recognizes that this connection is not well publicized or fully understood by those within minority communities. With NeurON, he seeks to inform young adults and children of all ages about these topics and spread the beauty of neuroscience. Overall, he likes to highlight the fact that understanding the brain is beneficial for all. In his free time, he likes to explore nature and write science articles and fiction pieces, as well as spending time with friends and family.
Advisory Board
Fred d’Oleire Uquillas
New Jersey, USA
As Founder and Executive Director, Fred helps plan and direct the policies, objectives, and initiatives of NeurON: The Neuroscience Outreach Network. He helps support strategy, vision development, promotions and operations. Fred is a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow and Ford Foundation National Academies of Sciences Predoctoral Fellow in the Neuroscience Department at Princeton University. His research focuses on large scale human brain networks and cognition. His contributions have been featured in a variety of news media outlets including CNN, ABC channel, and the L.A. Times. He is a mentor for the Graduate Scholars Program at Princeton University, is a student organizer for a social justice in neuroscience initiative, has served in the executive board for the Sinai Neuroscience Outreach Program in New York City, and was executive director for the Undergraduate Journal of Psychology at UC Berkeley.
On his spare time, he leads a pro bono consulting group for new ventures where he manages strategy consulting services for partners and clients of the Princeton University Graduate Consulting Club. In his free time, Fred enjoys learning photography, cooking and learning new recipes and cuisines.
Florence Hudson, B.S.Eng.
New York, USA
Florence Hudson is Executive Director of the Northeast Big Data Innovation Hub at Columbia University, a data science collaboration hub in the Northeast Region of the United States. She is a member of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society Technical Committee on Standards where she leads a working group encompassing 22 countries across 6 continents across industry, academia, healthcare, government, and technologists to develop standards for improved safety and security for connected healthcare devices. Florence trained as an Aerospace and Mechanical Engineer after receiving her B.S.Eng. from Princeton University, working for Grumman Aerospace Corporation and NASA, and later worked in information and communications technology across a variety of roles including IBM Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, and Internet2 Senior Vice President & Chief Innovation Officer.
Florence is a passionate leader that seeks to inspire future generations of technical and business leaders. She serves on multiple boards and advisory councils including the Princeton University Civil and Environmental Engineering Industry Advisory Board, the Cal Poly San Luis Obispo Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering Industry Advisory Board, and the Union County College Cybersecurity Advisory Board. Through her role as Executive Director for The Northeast Big Data Innovation Hub, Florence helps accelerate advancements in the national big data ecosystem, working with underserved communities across Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Vermont.
Konrad Kording, Ph.D.
Pennsylvania, USA
Konrad Kording is the Penn Integrated Knowledge Professor of Neuroscience at the University of Pennsylvania. His work seeks to answer several questions, including how the brain solves the credit assignment problem and how we should assign credit in the real world through causality. His interests extend into how applications of causality can be leveraged in biomedical research. He was a student at ETH Zurich with Peter Konig, and a post-doc at University College London with Daniel Wolpert and at MIT with Josh Tenenbaum. He is a kind science coach, a prolific collaborator, and an interdisciplinary optimist.
Most recently, professor Kording spearheaded a massive undertaking in open data science education known as Neuromatch Academy (NMA) as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic. NMA was a massive, free, interactive, online summer school experience spanning from hands-on modeling to meta-science interpretation skills in computational neuroscience. It closely taught close to 1,800 interactive students spanning 66 countries, many of which qualified for low-income designation. Overall, professor Kording’s efforts are aimed at providing students with a set of tools to use in different settings including data analysis and computational work.
Zachary Dulberg, M.D.
Toronto, Canada
Dr. Dulberg is a Family Medicine physician pursuing research in computational neuroscience and neural networks at the Princeton University Neuroscience Institute. He received his B.S. in Physics and Physiology from McGill University, his medical degree from the University of Toronto in Canada, and completed his residency in family medicine at the University of Ottowa. Dr. Dulberg has conducted and collaborated in research at the interface of healthcare and technology, including neural engineering, electrophysiology, and psychophysics. Most recently, he has developed novel methods for analyzing and classifying electroencephalogram signals during sleep at home using consumer technology. Dr. Dulberg is also a talented pianist and composer who has served as a music instructor at McGill University and enjoys volunteering for hospital memorials and events.
Most recently, Dr. Dulberg has been interested in machine learning, AI, and mathematics as they relate to neuroscience. He is pursuing a Ph.D. in Neuroscience at Princeton University, working with Dr. Jonathan Cohen, M.D., Ph.D.
Vanessa Gonzalez-Perez, Ph.D.
New Jersey, USA
Dr. Gonzalez-Perez is Assistant Dean of Diversity Initiatives in the Natural and Engineering Sciences at Princeton University. In her role, she guides recruitment and retention of diverse student populations, and is a trusted mentor and student advisor to students underrepresented in the natural and engineering sciences including students of color, women, low income and first generation college students. Dr. Gonzalez-Perez served as Assistant Research Professor at the College of Pharmacy at Washington State University and Manager of the Pharmacology Core for the Center for the Study of Natural Product-Drug Interactions. She is a recipient of a number of distinctions and is a virtual mentor for the National Mentoring Research Network. She received her B.S. in Biology at the University of Puerto Rico, and her Ph.D. in Genetics and Molecular Biology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
In addition to her work with the Princeton University Access, Diversity, and Inclusion Team, Dr. Gonzalez-Perez has served as a Role Model Mentor for HISPA, the Hispanics Inspiring Student’s Performance and Achievement program aimed at inspiring Latino high school and college students to discover their potential, reduce drop-out rates, and increase awareness of educational and career opportunities.