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David J. Madden, Ph.D. is the director of the laboratory. He is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the Duke University Medical Center. He is also a core faculty member in the Brain Imaging and Analysis Center (BIAC) and the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience (CCN). He is currently Editor-in-Chief of Neurobiology of Aging. Additional information is available here.
Jenna L. Merenstein, Ph.D. Recently completed three years as a postdoctoral research associate, funded by an F32 Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award (NRSA) Individual Postdoctoral Fellowship. Her project was High-Resolution Diffusion Imaging of Brain Connectivity in Healthy Aging and Alzheimer’s Disease. Jenna is currently Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Utah, with a lab using advanced behavioral and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) techniques to study healthy cognitive aging and age-related neurodegenerative disease: the U-CLIMB lab.
Jenna completed her doctoral work with Ilana Bennett at the University of California, Riverside. While at UC Riverside, Jenna conducted work on several topics in the cognitive neuroscience of aging, including the relation of white matter integrity to episodic memory, the relation of brain activation to implicit memory and learning, and neuroplasticity in advanced aging. At Duke, Jenna has worked on age-related differences in brain activation during visual search, high-resolution diffusion-weighted imaging, and depth- and curvature-based quantitative susceptibility mapping analyses of cortical iron in Alzheimer’s disease.
While at Duke, Jenna was awarded a George Maddox Fellowship, from the Duke Aging Center, for 2023. Jenna was also named a Duke \ UNC Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center Research Education Component (REC) Scholar, for her work on Column-Based Analyses of Cortical Iron in Healthy Aging and Alzheimer’s Disease.
Postdoctoral Alumni:
Postdoctoral Alumni:
Shivangi Jain, Ph.D. is currently a Research Scientist in Neuroscience at the AdventHealth Research Institute, in Orlando, Florida. She completed her bachelor's degree in Psychology and master's degree in Cognitive Science at the University of Allahabad, India, where she held a Graduate Merit Scholarship. She completed her doctorate in Psychology at the Georgia Institute of Technology, where she worked with Paul Verhaeghen on the effects of aging on working memory, attention and emotion. In her postdoctoral work, Shivangi participated in studies of age-related differences in structural and functional brain connectivity, and neural plasticity following hand transplantation.
Ying-hui Chou, Ph.D. completed a postdoctoral year in the lab, and then continued as a Medical Instructor In the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences. While at BIAC, Ying-hui worked on resting-state functional brain connectivity, particularly in relation to adult age and Parkinson's disease. She is currently Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Arizona, Tucson, where she has initiated a research program on applying transcranial magnetic stimulation, and related imaging techniques, to mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer's disease.
Emily L. Parks, Ph.D. is currently a Lecturing Fellow in the Thompson Writing Program at Duke University. In Emily's postdoctoral work, she used neuroimaging to investigate age-related differences in visual attention. Emily completed her graduate studies with our colleague Prof. Joe Hopfinger at UNC-Chapel Hill, where she conducted research on the relation between memory and attention.
Imke Kirste, Ph.D. completed her Ph.D. in biology at the Free University of Berlin. She was a fellow at the Center for Regenerative Therapies Dresden (CRTD), Charite Hospital Berlin, and the Max Planck Institute for Human Development (MPI). In her postdoctoral work, Imke participated in a study of brain activation during the emotional oddball task. She is currently a Study Manager in the Diagnostics Division of Roche, in Basel, Switzerland.
Julia Spaniol, Ph.D. is Professor in the Psychology Department of Toronto Metropolitan University, Toronto, Canada.
Julia's postdoctoral research was on a reaction time distribution model of memory retrieval.
For this work, Julia was the recipient of the 2005 APA Division 20 Postdoctoral Research Award.
Julia is the recipient of an Early Researcher Award from the Ontario Ministry of Research and Innovation (2014-2019) and has held the Canada Research Chair in Cognitive Aging (Tier 2, NSERC) since 2014.
Wythe Whiting, Ph.D. is Professor of Cognitive and Behavioral Science at Washington and Lee University, in Lexington, Virginia.
Wythe's postdoctoral research investigated top-down attention in visual search and semantic memory retrieval.
Tom Pierce, Ph.D. is Professor in the Psychology Department of Radford University, in Radford VA.
Tom worked on the interactive effects of health and cognitive functioning.
Phil Allen, Ph.D. is Professor of Psychology at the University of Akron, Ohio. He is currently Editor-in-Chief of the journal Experimental Aging Research.
During his postdoctoral work Phil developed the Parallel Input Serial Analysis (PISA) model of word recognition.
At the University of Akron, Phil has conducted extensive neuroimaging and behavioral analyses of the Chiari malformation type I of the cerebellum.
Staff and Student Alumni:
Staff and Student Alumni:
Tina Zhao was a Clinical Research Intern and postbaccalaureate fellow at BIAC. Tina completed her undergraduate degree in Neuroscience at Wellesley College, with additional coursework and research at MIT. She is currently conducting graduate study in the PhD program in the Department of Psychology of the University of Washington, Seattle. Tina is in the Cognition and Perception area and received a Provost Fellowship Award to begin her studies.
Hollie Mullin was a Clinical Research Intern for two years following her undergraduate degree at the University of Kansas, in Lawrence, Kansas, with a major in behavioral neuroscience. She wrote her senior honors thesis on “Differences in Experiencing the Speech-to-Song Illusion as a Function of Age." Hollie is currently pursuing her doctorate in clinical neuropsychology in the Department of Psychology at Penn State University and was recently awarded an NSF graduate fellowship.
Amalia Desir was an undergraduate research assistant for her last three years at Duke, graduating in 2025 with a major in Neuroscience and minor in Public Policy.
Nicole Stepovich was an undergraduate research assistant, majoring in Neuroscience, from her sophomore to senior years. She completed a senior project on the effect of bilingualism on functional brain connectivity in aging. Nicole is currently teaching 10th grade Biology and 12th grade AP Environmental Science at the Academy of the Pacific Rim Charter Public School, in Boston, MA. She is also volunteering at Boston Children's Hospital.
Alexa Putka completed her Neuroscience undergraduate degree at Duke, where she was the recipient of a summer neuroscience program fellowship from the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, and a Donald A. King Summer Research Fellowship. Alexa worked in the lab as a Clinical Research Intern in 2021 and is currently pursuing her graduate studies in Neuroscience at the University of Michigan.
Angela Cook was a research assistant following her undergraduate degree at the University of Texas at Dallas with a major in Neuroscience. She completed a master's degree in Data Science at the Institute for Advanced Analytics, North Carolina State University, and is currently a Statistician at NoviSci Inc.
Alex Lee completed his Duke undergraduate studies as a Biology major, including a thesis on the topic of functional and structural architecture of the aging brain, for the Department of Biology Graduation with Distinction Program. Alex was awarded a scholarship to attend the Ohio State University College of Medicine. Following his M.D. degree, Alex is completing a residency in internal medicine at the Cedars-Sinai Hospital, in Los Angeles.
Zach Monge completed his Ph.D. in the Duke Cognitive Neuroscience Admitting Program. Zach recently published a review article on the relation between cognitive and visual perceptual decline in healthy aging. A recent article uses graph theory to describe age-related differences in the brain networks underlying visual attention. He has also completed a project on the relation between cerebral white matter integrity and cognition in older adults.
Zach has been Director of Data Science at Merck since February 2021, where the focus is on integrating real world data and machine learning to guide strategies within Global Medical & Scientific Affairs in oncology.
Rachel Siciliano was a research assistant following her graduation with high honors in neuroscience, from Colgate University, Hamilton, NY. While at BIAC, she completed a project on brain activation during the processing of emotional stimuli. Rachel went on to obtain her Ph.D. in clinical psychology at Vanderbilt University. She is currently a clinical psychologist and postdoctoral fellow at the National Crime Victims Research and Treatment Center in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the Medical University of South Carolina, and co-chair of the Anxiety and Depression Association of America (ADAA) Suicide and Self-Injury Special Interest Group.
Ragini Singh was a Clinical Research Intern in the lab for a year following her baccalaureate in Psychology, with a minor in Mathematics, at Queen’s University, in Kingston, Ontario, Canada. Ragini is currently working in the private sector, as a project manager in market research, for Dynata.
Lauren Packard was a research assistant following her graduation from Elon College, in Elon, NC, where she designed an individual major in neuroscience, motor control, and public health. At Elon she was the recipient of a Presidential Scholarship, and was named a Glen Raven scholar in her senior year. Lauren completed the Physician Assistant program at UNC Chapel Hill, and is in private practice, at the Grants Pass Clinic, in Oregon.
Catherine Tallman was a research assistant following her undergraduate degree at Virginia Tech. Catherine completed her Ph.D. in psychology at UC San Diego and is currently a postdoctoral scholar there. Her work addresses issues in neuroimaging of memory consolidation.
Sally Cocjin was a research assistant following her undergraduate degree at DePaul University. She completed the graduate program in Occupational Therapy at Tufts University and is currently an occupational therapist at Shirley Ryan AbilityLab In Chicago.
Maria Boylan was a research assistant following her undergraduate degree at Virginia Tech and completed her Ph.D. in the Cognition and Neuroscience program at the University of Texas at Dallas. She is working currently a Senior Medical Science Liaison at Alector, Inc.
David Hoagey was a research assistant after completing his undergraduate degree at Penn State and recently completed his PhD. in the Cognition and Neuroscience program at the University of Texas at Dallas. He is currently a postdoctoral research associate at the Mallinckrodt Institute of Radiology at the Washington University in St. Louis.
Max Horowitz was an undergraduate assistant while completing his undergraduate degree at Duke. He completed a master's degree in medical physiology at Case Western Reserve University and a D. O. degree at the Touro College of Osteopathic Medicine in Harlem, New York. He completed a residency in internal medicine at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai/Morningside/West, and is completing a fellowship in endocrinology at Montefiore Medical Center.
Jesse Honig was an undergraduate research assistant in the lab for three years and completed the Graduation with Distinction program at Duke, with a neuroscience major. He conducted a research project on age-related differences in cerebral white matter integrity, based on his analyses of white matter lesion and DTI data. Jesse obtained his M.D. degree from the New York Medical College and is completing a residency in pediatrics.
Fei Tan was a research assistant in 2018 while completed her master’s degree in Biomedical Engineering at Duke. She completed her Ph.D. in Bioengineering from the UC Berkeley - UCSF Bioengineering program. Her dissertation work focused on pulmonary ventilation analysis with ultrashort echo (UTE) proton MRI. She is currently a Fellow at USFDA.
Miranda McMickens was a research assistant in the summer of 2018. She completed her bachelor's degree in Biomedical Engineering at Louisiana Tech University in Ruston, Louisiana, where received the Cengiz Topakoglu Award for Outstanding Undergraduate Student in Biomedical Engineering. Miranda is currently a NASA Mission Support Specialist and Cargo Mission Integrator for the International Space Station, in Houston, Texas.
Maria Sison was a research assistant while she completed her Duke undergraduate degree in Neuroscience at Duke. Maria completed her M.D. degree at the Duke University School of Medicine and is currently a resident in the Department of Medicine at the UNC-Chapel Hill School of Medicine.
Corri Bresko was a research assistant for all four years of her undergraduate studies at Duke, majoring in Biology and Psychology, from 1994-1998. Corri graduated Magna Cum Laude and completed her M.D. degree at the University of Texas School of Medicine in 2002. She is currently a physician specializing in family medicine in Spokane Valley, Washington.
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