Staff

Marshall Deppe; System Administrator

Marshall is the system administrator for CFMI and three other labs at Georgetown. His primary responsibilities are to recover, maintain, and upgrade the computing infrastructure for CFMI. The other major effort that Marshall is udnertaking on is to developing and implementing a cloud-based model for the center’s activities.

Dion Watson, MBA; Business Manager

I graduated from the University of Toledo in May 2013 with a B.A. in Marketing and Professional Sales. Received my MBA from Ohio Dominican University in 2015 with a focus in Finance. Currently, I am the Business Manager for CFMI at Georgetown University. In my free time, I love checking out new coffee shops and playing video games!

Kinney Van Hecke, MS; Research Scientist/Lab Manager

I started at CFMI in March 2019, and have been working as the Senior Research Technician since August 2020. I graduated from UNC Wilmington with a B.S. and M.S. in chemistry. As a chemistry graduate student, I developed two methods to create serotonin-like compounds in one step with enantiocontrol. Writing my thesis for that project required me to understand a little bit about what happens in the blood-brain barrier, and I was hooked on neuro after that! On the side, I am very interested in women's healthcare and improving drug approval processes to investigate the neuro side effects before they make it to market. For fun, I tutor high schoolers in math and science, and spend as much time outside as possible. Cycling, beach volleyball, and being in community bring me joy!

Research Assistants

Rebecca "Becca" Aitken

I graduated summa cum laude from Binghamton University in May 2021 with a B.S. in Integrative Neuroscience. As an undergraduate, I gained research experience studying antibacterial resistance in Pseudomonas aeruginosa. After graduating, I returned home to Silver Spring, Maryland, and I am currently an MRI Technician and Research Assistant here at CFMI Georgetown University. I love learning about different research projects going on at CFMI, and in the future, I hope to pursue a master’s in a neuroscience related discipline. I am particularly interested in research investigating the brain’s role in chronic pain and degenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s. I am also intrigued by research which combines neuroimaging methods with genetic approaches. I feel lucky to work with human participants for the first time in my research career as we probe the human brain! In my free time, I like to pet my dogs, sing in the car, and go thrift shopping.

Holly Crowder

I graduated from George Mason University in 2021 with a BS in Psychology, where I concentrated in cognitive and behavioral neuroscience. In my time there, I worked in a computational neuroscience lab that kindled my interest in using neuroimaging as a tool to understand behavior. Currently, I work as an MRI technician and research assistant at CFMI at Georgetown University. In my free time, I love finding new coffee shops, painting, and taking care of my pets.

Undergraduate Research Assistants

Yalda Zarrabi

Subin Lee

Alumni - Postdoctoral Fellows

Sujeeta Bhatt, Ph.D.

Sergey Borisov, Ph.D.

Kelly McVearry, Ph.D.

Stuart Washington, Ph.D.

Alumni - Graduate Students

Shady El Damaty

I'm a PhD candidate in Neuroscience at Georgetown University laboring at the intersection between computational science, cognitive neuroscience, and biomedical engineering in the interest of the advancement of human society. My immediate preoccupation is to advocate for and contribute towards a harmonization of equitable scientific advancement with social transformation in order to sculpt a more peaceful, just and collaborative global culture.
Current Active Research Project: My doctoral dissertation is in the field of developmental cognitive neuroscience as applied to juvenile justice and violence prevention. This research is made possible by a National Institute of Justice Graduate Research Fellowship that provides funds to extend brain imaging into high-risk youth populations.

Valerie L. Darcey, Ph.D, M.S, R.D.

My work aims to answer the overall question of how does diet and nutritional status impact the brain to modulate impulsive behavior? To this end, I combine my training in human (clinical) nutrition with my doctoral training in neuroscience to examine the relationship between omega-3 fatty acid status and development of prefrontally-mediated impulse control healthy adolescents using functional and structural MRI.
Currently, as a post-doctoral fellow at the National Institutes of Health, I am interested in using positron emission tomography (PET) to study how body weight and fed/fasted status relate to striatal dopamine signaling and propensity to rely on habitual versus goal-directed behavior in adults.

Doctoral Dissertation: Investigating the Relationship Between Long Chain Omega-3 Fatty Acids and Prefrontal Cortex Development During Adolescence (August 2017)

Erika Raven, Ph.D.

Doctoral Dissertation: Reproducibility and Use of Myelin Imaging Methods for the Study of Adolescent Brain Development (July 2017)

Benson Stevens, Ph.D.

Doctoral Dissertation: Genetic Influences of Dopamine and GABA on Adolescent Cognition (August 2017)

Kyle Shattuck, Ph.D.

Doctoral Dissertation: Investigating the cholinergic regulation of human learning and memory using functional magnetic resonance spectroscopy (August 2016)

Nancy Cowdin, Ph.D.

Doctoral Dissertation: A Comparison of Frequency-Specific Activity During REM Sleep in Trauma-Exposed Subjects with PTSD and Resilience (August 2014)

Leah Lozier, Ph.D.

Doctoral Dissertation: The Behavioral and Neural Basis of Emotional Face Processing in Atypically Developing Children and Adolescents (July 2013)

Stephanie (Maxfield) Panker, Ph.D.

Doctoral Dissertation: The effects of robotic training and cortical stimulation on reaching skill after chronic stroke (August 2011)

Alumni - Research Assistants

Alumni - Interns/Undergraduate Research Assistants

Alumni - Staff

Gareth Evans, Financial Administrator

Jean Corday, M.P.H., Financial Administrator

Marcus Lauer, Systems Administrator

Shawn Nock, Systems Administrator

Vladislav Staroselskiy, M.Sc., Systems Administrator