Maria Angela Franceschini (2015-2018) Chair. Mari is an Associate Professor at Harvard Medical School with specific training and expertise in the development of non-invasive optical techniques and applications in neuroscience, neurology, and brain health. As a pioneer in the field of near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS), she has made substantial contributions to the development of NIRS instruments and to the modeling and testing of diffusion theory to describe light propagation in turbid media. She has successfully applied the technology to a large range of functional neuroimaging and clinical neuro-monitoring applications.

Rebecca Dewey (2015-2017) – Rebecca is a Research Fellow in the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Nottingham, working with the NIHR Nottingham Hearing Biomedical Research Unit. Her background is in neuroimaging physics and the development of techniques using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), near infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) and electrophysiological recordings of the auditory brainstem response (ABR). Rebecca’s current work is in auditory neuroscience, specifically investigating the physiological bases of “hidden” hearing loss.

Rodrigo Forti (2015-2017) – Rodrigo is a PhD Candidate in the Laboratory of Biomedical Optics from the Institute of Physics at the University of Campinas, Brazil. His research is focused on the translation of the diffuse optical techniques to the clinic (both near-infrared spectroscopy, NIRS, and diffuse correlation spectroscopy, DCS), especially for monitoring neuro-critical patients at the intensive care unit (ICU). 

Sarah Lloyd-Fox (2015-2017) – Sarah is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Brain and Cognitive Development (CBCD), Birkbeck, University of London. Following her cross-disciplinary PhD in developmental neuroscience and medical physics she became an MRC Research Fellow & the Head of the NIRS Research Lab at the CBCD in 2011. She has pioneered the use of fNIRS with infants, designing age appropriate headgear and paradigms to investigate the developing brain in infancy. Her work currently focuses on understanding atypical trajectories in brain function in infants at risk of compromised development due to (1) neurodevelopmental disorders (autism and ADHD) and (2) under nutrition, which recently led to the first infant functional neuroimaging study in Africa.

Katherine Perdue (2015-2017) – Katherine is a Research Associate in the Labs of Cognitive Neuroscience at Boston Children’s Hospital. Her research focuses on developing robust functional near-infrared spectroscopy methods for use in infants and children. Katherine’s current projects involve using fNIRS for developmental cognitive neuroscience and global health applications.