Faculty & Senior Research Staff
Jennifer Bruno, PhD
Senior Research Associate
Dr. Bruno is a cognitive neuroscientist specializing in human brain development. The overarching goal of her research is to inform and advance clinical care and heath policy for individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities.
Email: jenbruno
Hadi Hosseini, PhD
Assistant Professor
Hadi is a computational/cognitive neuroscientist investigating large-scale structural and functional brain networks in various neuropsychiatric disorders using multimodal neuroimaging, graph theoretical and multivariate pattern analyses techniques. He is also working on developing novel NIRS-based neurofeedback interventions to enhance executive functions.
Email: hoesseiny
Booil Jo, PhD
Associate Professor
Dr. Jo is Associate professor (biostatistics) with expertise in latent variable modeling and causal inference. Her current focus is in developing statistical methods and inferential strategies for clinical trials and intervention studies accounting for various complications such as treatment noncompliance, missing data, clustering, mediation, and longitudinal heterogeneity.
Email: booil
Amy Lightbody, PhD
Senior Research Associate
Email: amy.lightbody
Manish Saggar, PhD
Assistant Professor
Manish is a computational neuroscientist and focuses on developing novel experimental designs and computational analyses to better understand typical and atypical brain functioning. His current research projects include - (a) finding neural correlates of creativity and its enhancement; (b) developing multi-person fMRI paradigms to assess the neural correlates of live social interaction; and (c) constructing methods to characterize and model dynamics of brain’s intrinsic activity. Manish is also part of Stanford’s d.school teaching team, where he is actively involved in teaching design thinking principles and their relation to mental health.
Email: saggar
Tracy Jordan, PhD
Clinical Assistant Professor
Tracy earned her PhD in Clinical Psychology with an emphasis in Pediatric Neuropsychology at Palo Alto University. Throughout graduate school, Tracy administered neuropsychological assessments and assisted with several projects at CIBSR including the Turner Syndrome project. She was also involved with a study examining brain development in bilingual children with Dr. Fumiko Hoeft at the UCSF BrainLENS lab. During her pre-doctoral internship at the University of Minnesota Medical School/Masonic Children's Hospital, she completed neuropsychological evaluations with children and adolescents in a clinical setting and worked on a research project investigating treatment outcomes for children identified with Hurler Syndrome at birth. Tracy completed her postdoc at CIBSR by working with Dr. Lara Foland-Ross on the Klinefelter Syndrome project and with Dr. Amy Lightbody on the Fragile X project. In her free time, Tracy enjoys teaching yoga, running, and spending time outdoors with her dogs.
Email: tracyjordan
Post Doctoral Fellows and Visiting Researchers
Heather Alva, MD
Pediatric Hematology/Oncology Fellow
Dr. Alva is a current Pediatric Hematology/Oncology Fellow at Stanford in her final year of training. The overarching goal of her research is to understand neurocognitive outcomes in patients with sickle cell disease and how they may be mediated by curative stem cell transplant therapies.
Email: halva
Javad Ansarifar, PhD
Postdoctoral Scholar
Javad earned a Ph.D. degree in the Department of Industrial and Manufacturing Systems Engineering and M.Sc., majoring in Computer Science at Iowa State University in 2021. He received his additional M.Sc. degree in industrial engineering at the University of Tehran in 2017. Javad's research lies in deep learning, computer vision, computational biology, and big data optimization. He integrated machine learning models with optimization models to develop decision-making tools under uncertainty and present a transparent and explainable machine learning model to decipher complex non-linear interactions between predictors.
Email: javad
Barbara Avelar, PhD
Postdoctoral Scholar
Barbara completed her PhD at Karolinska Institutet in September 2019 under the supervision of Lars Bäckman, Alireza Salami, and Lars Nyberg. During her time in Stockholm, she used different neuroimaging techniques to investigate functional, structural, and molecular correlates of cognitive aging with a special focus on functional connectivity. She has a research master’s in Cognitive Neuroscience from Leiden University (’14) and a bachelor’s in Psychological Sciences from the University of Lisbon (’12), and has also worked at both Leiden University and University College London investigating brain correlates of language and emotion. Barbara will be working with Dr. Hadi Hosseini on ways to integrate multimodal data to characterize and better predict Alzheimer’s disease progression.
Email: barave
Stephanie Balters, PhD
Postdoctoral Scholar
Dr. Stephanie Balters is an instructor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University School of Medicine. She is the director of the Empowerment Neuroscience Laboratory and studies how social factors such as interpersonal trauma and cultural biases impact brain function and mental health outcomes. Dr. Balters develops evidence-based interventions to improve well-being, work productivity, and team performance. She is passionate about embracing authenticity, vulnerability, and individual differences, and leveraging adverse experiences towards self-growth and achieving one’s full potential.
Email: balters
Cassondra Eng, PhD
T32 Sports Neuroscience Postdoctoral Scholar
Cassondra (Cassie) completed her PhD at Carnegie Mellon University with focuses in developmental cognitive neuroscience and educational technology. She is employing multimethodological research with neuroimaging (portable fNIRS), physiological, behavioral, and clinical assessments in augmented and virtual reality contexts. Cassie's goal is to promote neurological, cognitive, and physical health and elucidate the environment-brain-body-behavior interactions that impact functioning and neuroplasticity for individuals with and at risk for attentional difficulties.
Yuanyuan Gao, PhD
Postdoctoral Scholar
Yuanyuan Gao completed her PhD at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Her PhD thesis researched the effects of neuromodulation on human motor learning using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS). She finished her first postdoctoral training term in Dr. David Boas' lab in Boston University on advanced fNIRS data analysis. She is now a postdoctoral fellow working at Stanford University for her second term of postdoctoral training on the clinical applications of fNIRS. Her research interests are fNIRS, its multimodels with fMRI, EEG, eye-tracker, physiology measurements, neuromodulation and machine learning models, and its applications in clinical research.
Email: yuangao
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Qianheng Ma, PhD
Postdoctoral Scholar
Qianheng (Jessica) Ma obtained her PhD degree of biostatistics at University of Chicago under the supervision of Prof. Donald Hedeker and in 2021 she recieved the dissertation grant from Society of Multivariate Experimental Psychology (SMEP). Her current research focus are modern statistical methods and deep learning techniques for mining (multivariate) intensive longitudinal data especially psychological/behavioral measures collected by mobile/wearable devices. Her postdoctoral research mentors are Professor Booil Jo and Professor Allan Reiss. Besides research, she loves playing the piano and is good at Jazz improvization and she can speak fluent Cantonese.
Email: qianhengma
Stephanie Van Riper, PhD
Postdoctoral Scholar
Stephanie earned her PhD in Exercise Psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The focus of her doctoral work was to examine how exercise influences the central nervous system of individuals with fibromyalgia, Gulf War Illness, and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome; chronic multi-symptom illnesses that are significantly heterogeneous, though frequently have overlapping symptoms of pain, fatigue, and emotional dysregulation. Through her work applying Diffusion Tensor Imaging, she examined how cerebral white matter structure may be dysfunctional in these individuals, as well as how exercise may interact with these mechanisms. The goal of her current work at CIBSR is to examine how exercise influences brain activity and cognitive function in neurodevelopmental disorders such as ADHD using Functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS). Stephanie hopes to improve our understanding of how exercise may interact with disease symptoms and underlying mechanisms to advance treatments for these complex conditions.
Email: vanriper
Allison Vreeland, PhD
Postdoctoral Scholar
Allison Vreeland, Ph.D. is a Clinical Psychology Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University. She received her PhD in Clinical Psychology from Vanderbilt University in 2021. Currently, Dr. Vreeland is being co-mentored by Dr. Jennifer Frankovich in the Pediatric Acute-onset Neuropsychiatric Syndrome (PANS) Program and Dr. Allan Reiss in the Center for Interdisciplinary Brain Sciences Research (CIBSR). Dr. Vreeland’s current research includes empirical investigations aimed at understanding the underlying processes of psychiatric disorders. Specifically, her primary postdoctoral research project is aimed at identifying neural markers of the PANS illness.
Email: vreeland
Research and Administrative Staff
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Alexa Booras, BA
Clinical Research Coordinator
Alexa received her BS in cognitive science from UC Davis. After, she worked under Dr. Timothy Hanks researching perceptual decision making. She is interested in studying brain dynamics via computational modeling and neuroimaging.
Email: boorasak
Lauren Dacorro, BA
Clinical Research Coordinator
Lauren received her B.A. in Psychology from Biola University and is completing her M.A. in Cognitive Psychology at San Francisco State University. At SFSU under the guidance of dr. Mark Geisler, she is researching the neural correlates, using EEG, of emotion on working memory in anxiety. Before Stanford, she was an Assistant Clinical Research Coordinator at Neuroscape at UCSF under the direction of Dr. Adam Gazzaley. There she spearheaded participant recruitment as well as organized and administered neuropsychological assessments to older adults to assess his or her cognitive levels for determining his or her eligibility for the lab’s older adult studies. At Stanford, she will be working with Dr. Hadi Hosseini and hopes to learn more about neuroimaging while expanding her interests in clinical research in various clinical populations. She aims to get her PhD in Clinical Neuropsychology, working with children and adolescents.
Email: ldacorro
Andrea Funtila, BS
Clinical Research Coordinator
Andrea serves as the CRCA for the Klinefelter study. She earned her B.S. in Biology from University of California, Riverside and has completed the Post-baccalaureate Premedical Certificate program at Keck Graduate Institute. In Riverside, Andrea worked closely with K-12 students and served as a tutor. As part of her undergrad, she acted as a mentor and resource for STEM students. Andrea strives to take on every opportunity and grow from it as a life-long learner At Stanford she hopes to expand her passion in creating a warm environment within her team and in clinical settings while expanding her knowledge on neuropsychological testing. Her current interests revolve around the relationship of hormones and behavior, adolescent development, and trauma-related anxiety disorders.
Email: afuntila
Meagan Lasecke, MS
Psychology Practicum Student
Meagan Lasecke graduated with a BS in psychology from Saint Mary’s College of California in 2019. She received her M.S. in Clinical Psychology from Palo Alto University (PAU) in 2022 and is a doctoral candidate in the clinical psychology PhD program at PAU. At PAU, she is a member of Dr. Eduardo Bunge’s research lab, the Children and Adolescents Psychotherapy and Technology (CAPT). In this lab, she has completed several projects and created an online training study for her dissertation which seeks to understand clinicians’ attitudes and perceptions on videoconference therapy with children and adolescents. At Stanford, she is working with Tracy (Vargo) Jordan, PhD, Lara Foland-Ross, PhD and Allan L. Reiss, M.D., as part of the Brains, Genes, and Puberty (BGAP) Study in the Center for Interdisciplinary Brain Sciences Research (CIBSR). As part of this study, Meagan administers and scores neuropsychological and psychodiagnostic assessments (telehealth and in-person) with children and their caregivers to investigate the development of brain and behavior in boys with and without Klinefelter Syndrome (KS). Through her participation in the Pediatric Behavioral Health emphasis at PAU, she has been providing teletherapy and in-person services to youth and families within outpatient clinics, hospitals, and school-based settings. Meagan’s professional aspiration is to become a pediatric psychologist supporting medically fragile children through consultation/liaison (C/L) services, brief assessment, and intervention within a multidisciplinary medical setting.
Email: mlasecke@paloaltou.edu
Jamie Sundstrom, BS
Clinical Research Coordinator
Jamie is a recent graduate from the University of California, Davis where she earned her degree in Cognitive Science with an emphasis in Neuroscience and a minor in Psychology. She now serves as a Clinical Research Coordinator for the PANDA study as well as the BGAP study. During her undergraduate years, she was involved in a longitudinal study for young children and adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorder. She has a special interest in developmental disorders as well as the genetic components that underlie brain development and function.
Email: jlsundt
Alex Tayts
System Administrator
Email: atayts
Stanford Collaborators
Bruce Buckingham, MD
Professor of Pediatrics (Endocrinology) at the Lucile Salter Packard Children's Hospital
Email: buckingham
Gary Glover, PhD
Gary Glover research interests encompass the physics and mathematics of imaging with Magnetic Resonance. Presently my research is directed in part towards exploration of rapid MRI scanning methods using spiral and other non-Cartesian k-space trajectories for dynamic imaging of function.
Email: gary.glover
Lynne Huffman
Associate professor (teaching) of pediatrics (neonatology) and, by courtesy, of psychiatry and behavioral sciences.
Email: lynne.huffman
David Lyons, PhD
Email: dmlyons
Margo Thienemann, MD
Email: mthiene
Extramural Collaborators
David Boas, PhD
Professor, Biomedical Engineering at Boston University
Director of Neurophotonics Center
Fumiko Hoeft, MD, PhD
Director, UConn Brain Imaging Research Center
Professor, University of California, San Francisco
Lab Alumni
Safiyyah Bachar, MS
Clinical Research Coordinator
Kristi Bartholomay, BS
Clinical Research Coordinator
Edith Brignoni Pérez, Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Scholar
Hannah Fingerhut, BS
Clinical Research Coordinator
Daniel Hasegan, BA
Research Data Analyst
Rihui Li, PhD
Postdoctoral Scholar
Cindy Lee, MA
Clinical Research Coordinator
Matthew Marzelli, MS
Research Data Analyst
Jonas Miller, PhD
Postdoctoral Scholar
Megan Mullis, MS
Clinical Research Coordinator
Aaron Piccirilli, BS
Research Data Analyst
Apurva Prasad, BA
Research Assistant
Bhavana Rai, BS
Research Assistant
Samantha Reitmaier, BS
Clinical Research Coordinator
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