GPN Alumni

Melanie Shackett graduated in 2014. She is currently a Principal Scientist at AbbVie in Cambridge, MA. From 2016-2020, she was a Senior Scientist at Yumanity Therapeutics. Prior to Yumanity, a Research Scientist at Biogen, Research Labs.

Lena Sherbakov graduated in 2014. She is an Assistant Director of MRI Data and Analysis Services at the University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, CO.

Marie-Pierre Payen graduated in 2015. Her latest position is as a Program Director at NICHD. Previously, she worked at NIH in NINDS as a Health Specialist. Previously in 2019, she was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Naval Medical Research Center in Silver Spring, MD doing neurotrauma research at the Henry M. Jackson Foundation for the Advancement of Military Medicine. Upon receiving her PhD, she was employed at Pfizer Inc. for three years as a staff pharmacologist.

Chelsea Trengrove graduated in 2015.  She just became the CEO and co-founder of Neoclease a company focused on precision gene editing for genetic therapies. Her previous  position was as Director of Business Development & Digital Biomarkers at Empatica, and Strategic Partnership Lead, Regeneron.

Emily Stephen graduated in 2015. She is now an Assistant Professor in the department of Math and Statistics at Boston University.  Prior to joining BU as a faculty member, she worked with Dr. Emery Brown at MIT and Patrick Purdon at the University of California, San Francisco. She now plays a major role as Chair of our Computational Neuroscience Curriculum Committee and as faculty advisor for our computational PhD specialization.

Caroline Moore-Kochlacs graduated in 2016. She was a Postdoctoral Fellow with Emery Brown at MIT. Caroline passed away in 2020. She will be sorely missed by everyone who knew her graceful spirit and brilliance.

Jason Climer graduated in 2016. He is now an Assistant Professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Prior to his appointment he was a Postdoctoral Fellow at Northwestern University.

Nicholas James graduated in 2016. He is now a Data Scientist/Analyst at Mathwaorks. Before this appointment, he was a Data Science Associate at McKesson and Data Scientist at Meta.  After his GPN graduation he was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of California, San Francisco.

Caitlin Monaghan graduated in 2016. She is currently a Data Science Manager at Fresenius Medical Care. After graduating GPN she was a Postdoctoral Fellow at McLean Hospital, Harvard University.

Chris Watson graduated in 2016. His most recent position was at Enlitic where he is a Data Analyst.

Grant Fiddyment graduated in 2016. Grant is an Applied Scientist at Cleaning the Glass which partners with NBA teams to receive 3D pose data from camera tracking systems and compute basketball-relevant events and estimates that help analyze the game in unprecedented detail. Prior to this new job he was the Manager of Research at Philadelphia 76ers and he continues as an Adjunct Professorial Lecturer at American University.

Maya Woodbury graduated in 2016. She worked up the ranks of AbbVie and is currently a Principal Research Scientist.

Katrina Furth graduated in 2016. She has been an Adjunct Professor at Marymount University and an Associate Scholar at the Charlotte Lozier Institute in Shirlington, Virginia.

Nicholas Robinson graduated in 2016. Nicholas is currently a Chancellor’s Fellow at the University of Edinburgh within the Centre for Discovery Brain Sciences.  Previously he was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Wolfson Institute for Biomedical Research, University College, London.

Spencer Torene graduated in 2017.  He is currently a Principal Research Scientist at Meibel after transitioning from his job as a Manager in the Research and Development Department at Thomson Reuters Special Services.

Will Liberti graduated in 2017. He is the founder and CEO of a Biotechnology company called Morphosis. Previously he was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the U.C. Berkeley Department of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science followed by a Project Lead at the Lawrence Livermore Berkeley National Lab, Cyclotron Road.

Jason Sherfey graduated in 2017. Jason is currently an Associate Director at Bristol Myers Squibb in Quantitative Systems Pharmacology. He is also a Research Assistant Professor (Adjunct) at the Psychological and Brain Sciences Department at Boston University.

Mariel Seiglie graduated in 2018. Currently Mariel is a Pharmacology Research Scientist at Vertex Pharmaceuticals. Previously she was a Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard Medical School and at Children’s Hospital, Boston, MA.

Eli Townsend-Shobin graduated in 2018. He is a Senior Director of US Diagnostic Strategy and Commercialization at Biogen. He previously was a Senior Director at the Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery Foundation and held various positions at Biogen after a year at Huron.

Gabriel Cler graduated in 2018. He is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Speech & Hearing Sciences at the University of Washington. Prior to this position he was a Postdoctoral Fellow, at the Speech & Brain Research Group and Wellcome Centre for Integrative Neuroimaging at the University of Oxford.

Lewis Nathan Perkins graduated in 2018. He is now a Machine Learning Engineer at Apple.

Ellen Witowski graduated in 2019. Currently she is a Scientist II at Soufflé Therapeutics and prior to this appointment was a postdoctoral fellow and then Scientist 1 at Biogen.

Catherine Moore graduated in 2019. She is an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Medicine at Johns Hopkins University. She was previously a Postdoctoral Fellow at the university.

Nathaniel Kinsky graduated in 2019. He is currently a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Michigan Medical School working to discover how sleep regulates memory formation. Nathaniel was a former graduate student of the late Howard Eichenbaum.

Michael Romano graduated in 2019. He is a Clinical Fellow at the Department of Radiology and Biomedical Imaging at  University of California, San Francisco.  He is actively involved in research linking AI to neuroradiology.

John Bladon graduated in 2019. He is currently a Scientist II in Genomic Medicine at Sanofi.  He previously did his postdoctoral work at Brandeis University.

Sean Tobyne graduated in 2019. He is currently a Senior Vice President, AI and Data Strategy, at Linus Health.  Previously was a Vice President there and a Lead Researcher/Project Manager at the Martinos Center in Biomedical Imaging, Harvard MGH.

Kathryn Hixson graduated in 2019. She is currently a Senior Scientist in Therapeutic Gene Editing for Asklepios BioPharmaceutical.  Prior to this position she was a postdoctoral fellow at UNC for their Catalyst for Rare Diseases.

Marek Kowalski graduated in 2019 mentored by Nancy Kopell. He is currently a research fellow in AI safety. He was a Resident physician in internal medicine at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center.

Iris Trutzer graduated in 2019. She is currently an oncology fellow at the Icahn School of Medicine. She did her internal medicine residency at John Hopkins Medicine.

Austin Soplata graduated in 2019. He is currently a Research Software Engineer at Brown University. Austin has worked as a Postdoctoral Researcher at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital. He did his thesis work with Nancy Kopell.

Scott Kuzdeba graduated in 2019. He is a Chief Scientist at BAE Systems in Burlington, MA.

William Mau graduated in 2019. He is now a Principle Data Scientist at Cohere Health. He did his postdoctoral training at Ichan School of Medicine.

Scott Bressler graduated in 2020. Currently a Senior Contract Manager at Mathworks.  He was a Lead Research Scientist at Elemind Technologies, Inc. in Cambridge, MA.

Mary Kate Joyce graduated in 2020. Currently a Postdoctoral Associate in the Neural Systems Laboratory at Boston University. She was a postdoctoral Associate at Yale University.

Sophie Schwartz graduated in 2020.  Currently Senior Technical Program Manager at Bridge Analytics. Formerly a Program Manager of Federal Awards at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard and a Research Scientist at Boston University. Research and Machine Learning intern at Google.

Dante Smith graduated in 2020. Currently he is a Data Scientist II at the National Institute of Health. Formerly he was a Data Scientist at Axle Informatics and postdoctoral associate at BU.

Terri Scott graduated in 2020. Currently she is an Assistant Teaching Professor at Northeastern University.  She was a Postdoctoral Fellow in Dr. Edward Chang’s Lab at the University of California, San Francisco.

Adam Vogel graduated in 2020 with a new patent on technology that he developed for use in his thesis. He is currently a  Senior Analyst-Biotechnology for Craig-Hallum. Formerly a Vice President in Biotechnology at Wells Fargo.

Ashley Comer graduated in 2020. She is currently a Senior Scientist in Translational Medicine at Muna Therapeutics. Formerly worked as a Scientist in Neuroimmunology and Neurodegeneration at Sanofi.

Julia Chartov graduated in 2020. Currently a Senior Machine Learning Engineer at Athenahealth Biosciences.  Formerly a Data Scientist II at Apriori Bio.

Trish (Rein) Shaw graduated in January 2021. She is now a Principal Scientist at Bristol Meyers Squibb. Formerly Scientist II at Frequency Therapeutics.

Ying Jiang graduated in January 2021. He is a Postdoctoral Associate at the Cheng Lab.

Louis Vinke graduated in January 2021. He is an Instructor in Investigation, Psychiatry, at Mass General Research Institute, Harvard University. Previously he was a postdoctoral fellow at the Martinos Center.

Samantha Shelton graduated in 2021. She is now a Freelance Lifesciences Consultant after working previously as a Senior Scientist in Genomic Editing, Human Molecular, and Cellular Biology at Biogen.

Janis Intoy graduated in 2021. She is now an AI and Data Science Engineer at Deloitte.

Nathanael Cruzado graduated in 2021. He now works as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Georgia Tech School of Electrical and Computer Engineering.

Sam Levy graduated in 2021 and is currently working as a postdoctoral fellow in Lisa Giocomo’s lab at Stanford University in Palo Alto. He is continuing to work on spatial navigation and memory in mice using virtual reality environments and Neuropixels probes.

Hana Yeh graduated in 2021 and is now a Senior Scientist II at Abbvie.  Formerly she was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Perlis Lab at Massachusetts General Hospital.

Lisa Kretsge graduated in 2021 and is now an Associate Director, Business Development at PsychoGenics after working her way up at the company from her first position as an Associate Scientist.

Margaret Minnig graduated in 2022. She is now a Psychiatrist in Seattle Washington.  

Tom Morin graduated in 2022. He is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the MGH/HST Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging and has his own consulting business in Neuroimaging & CNS Drug Delivery.

Madhura Baxi graduated in 2022. Computational Research Scientist II at the CHOC Children’s data science and research institute. She was a Data Scientist at ImmuneID.

Wei Zhong Goh graduated in 2022. Senior Computing Engineer in a new Startup (in Stealth Mode). He was a Machine Learning Scientist at Wayfair. His expertise is in probability and nonparametric statistics.

Kristyn Borrelli graduated in 2022. She is now a Data Strategy Associate Consultant at ZS.  She was formerly a consultant for Acsel Health in New York, NY.

Jenny Klein graduated in 2022. She is now a Postdoctoral Associate at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard.

Greg Wirak graduated in 2022. He is a Postdoctoral Fellow for Neuroinflammation & Precision Neurology at Sanofi.

Monika Shpokayte graduated in 2022. Her studies have focused on understanding the underlying biological connection between psychiatric and neurodegenerative illnesses. She is now a Director of Business Strategy and Scientific Affairs at Cognito Therapeutics.

Catherine Mikkelsen graduated in 2022. Her research focused on studying prefrontal-hippocampal interactions in rodents. She is now a Postdoctoral Fellow in Neuroscience at Smith College. 

Emily Schlafly graduated in 2023. She is a postdoctoral fellow working with Professor Mark Kramer at Boston University and Johns Hopkins.

Lucas Carstensen graduated in 2023. He is a Staff Scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Previously a Research Scientist at Axoft in Cambridge, MA. 

Michael Rosario graduated in 2023. He is currently a Postdoctoral Scholar at USC Leonard Davis School of Gerontology in LA, CA.  He was a Postdoctoral Scholar at the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California.

Kaitlyn Dorst graduated in 2023. She is now a Postdoctoral Fellow for Neuroscience at Tufts University School of Medicine. 

Luis Ramirez graduated in 2024. He is currently doing his postdoc at UCSD in the Serences Lab, using EEG, fMRI, and computational models of vision to investigate how past visual processing influences future visual perception.

Stamati Liapis graduated in 2024. He is CTO and Co-founder of Enlaye.  

Scott Knudstrup graduated in 2024. He is currently a researcher in the Thousand Brains Research Project. He was a Postdoctoral Researcher at Boston University. 

Kelton Wilmerding graduated in 2024. He is currently engaged in a postdoctoral fellowship at Brandeis University with Dr. Christine Grienberger, using population-level electrophysiology to investigate the dynamics of activity-dependent learning.

Rifqi Affan graduated in 2024.  He is currently a Postdoctoral Scholar in Alfred Lee’s Lab at BIDC in cognitive science.

Allison Tipton graduated with an MD/PhD in 2025.  She is currently completing her residency in Psychiatry at the UNC.