I am currently a graduate student in the Gratton Lab. I earned my bachelor's degree in psychology at Utah State University in 2016 doing research on neural differences associated with Attention Restoration Theory (ART) using EEG in the Multi-sensory Cognition Lab under Dr. Kerry Jordan. After graduating I worked as a lab manager at Carnegie Mellon University under the Cognitive Axon Lab under Dr. Timothy Verstynen. My primary focus involved investigating the association between physical health and the integrity of major white matter pathways. My current work in the lab is focused on studying individual differences in brain networks that relate to symptoms and behavior in psychiatric disorders.

I am a postdoctoral researcher in the Gratton lab. Meeting the demands of everyday life requires one to inhibit prepotent responses, ignore irrelevant stimuli, and complete extended action sequences. These behaviors fall under the domain of cognitive control. My research has focused on adjustments in cognitive control and task representation. Individual differences in cognitive control and the neural substrates of these differences are my primary interest areas. More generally, I am interested in the challenges facing network neuroscience that stem from human heterogeneity.

Neuroscience Major, Class of 2021

Neuroscience Major, Class of 2021

Neuroscience Major w/ Chemistry Minor, Class of 2020 Shawn Ohazuruike was raised in Newark, New Jersey and attends Dartmouth College where he is currently pursuing a major in Neuroscience with a minor in Chemistry. He runs the hurdles for the Dartmouth Track and Field Team; serves as the vice president for Dartmouth’s chapter of the Kidney Diseases Screening Awareness program (KDSAP); and works as an undergraduate advisor through Dartmouth Residential Operations in addition to his neuroscience research in motivation and reward. After graduating from college, he plans on taking a gap year to engage in clinical research before applying to MD/Ph.D. programs throughout the country.

Jennifer Pius-Alonee, Class of 2022, Weinberg College of Arts of Sciences majoring in Neuroscience and minoring in French. Research interests broadly include brain structure and function, as related to behavior, cognition, and disease.

Chief Lab Morale Officer. Received his theraPets degree at Carnegie Mellon University in 2017. Has established work with the retirement community. Extremely good boy.

I am a Research Coordinator for the Gratton Lab. I grew up in Vancouver, Canada and Philadelphia, PA before earning my bachelor’s degree from Washington University in St. Louis in 2018. There, I studied Philosophy-Neuroscience-Psychology on the Cognitive Neuroscience track and French. Before joining the Gratton Lab, I worked in Dr. Steve Petersen’s lab on a number of projects investigating large-scale functional networks and individual differences in network organization. I am broadly interested in the nature of these individual differences, especially as they pertain to cognitive control and relate to behavior.

Zach is a Neuroscience Ph.D. student. He has a B.S from Tufts University and worked for several years as a Data Scientist for software companies before starting at Northwestern in 2019. He is interested in functional brain networks - their neurobiological mechanism, development throughout life, responsiveness to changes, and how changes manifest in our perception.

Class of 2020, Neuroscience major with a Biology concentration. Outside of her lab work, Brittany is interested in studying neurodegenerative diseases and drug addiction.

Maddie is a class of 2023 undergraduate studying Neuroscience and Religious Studies. She is interested in the contemplative neuroscience, specifically the effect of meditation and breath training on neural networks.

Lisa Calegari is a Class of 2024 undergraduate student majoring in Neuroscience, with a possible double-major or minor in Computer Science. She is interested in neural networks, especially in terms of how breakdowns in them relate to psychiatric illnesses and neurodegenerative diseases.

Class of 2022, Majoring in Neuroscience with a concentration in Human Behavior and Cognition and a minor in Computer Science. Research interests include the neural networks involved with the emotional brain, with the goal of understanding psychiatric illnesses more in order to improve treatment.

I am a Research Coordinator and Lab Manager for the Gratton Lab. I grew up in the Dallas-Ft. Worth area of Texas. I earned my undergraduate degree in Cognitive Science from the University of California: Berkeley, where I first studied neuroscience. I am interested in how individual differences in brain networks affect performance at different tasks and how these brain networks change over time. In the future, I am hoping to explore the relationship between brain networks and circadian rhythms.

Class of 2022. Neuroscience Major with a Biology Concentration and Global Health Minor.

I was born in upstate New York and earned my undergraduate degree at SUNY Buffalo. I then went on to earn my MA in clinical psychology at Ball State University where I first was exposed to neuroscience research with EEG. I continued my work with EEG under Shinobu Kitayama at the University of Michigan until joining the Gratton Lab in 2018. My work is primarily focused on finding neural correlates of individual differences in behavior. To this end, I have used fMRI and EEG methodology to investigate neural correlates of creativity, culture, and psychopathology. Currently, my work is focused on how longitudinal (or “precision”) fMRI can inform the neural basis of psychopathology.

Class of 2024 majoring in Neuroscience with a possible double major in Statistics. Interested in studying neural networks and how they affect human behaviors.

My name is Elena Housteau and I am a sophomore at Northwestern University majoring in neuroscience and global health on the premedical path. I am originally from New Albany, Ohio and at Northwestern I participate in student groups such as NU Global Brigades and NU Model United Nations. I am most interested in learning about the technical aspects of conducting and analyzing neuroscience research and how malfunctions in our neural networks can lead to different illnesses.

Dr. Caterina Gratton is a cognitive neuroscientist and Principal Investigator of the Gratton Lab at Northwestern University. Dr. Gratton is originally from Champaign-Urbana, Illinois. She has undergraduate degrees in Psychology and Neuroscience from the University of Illinois and a Ph.D. in Neuroscience from the University of California, Berkeley. She did her post-doctoral work in the Neurology Department at Washington University in St. Louis with Dr. Steve Petersen. Dr. Gratton is now an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at Northwestern, with a secondary appointment in the Neurology Department in Northwestern's Feinberg School of Medicine. She is also a Preceptor in the Northwestern University Interdepartmental Neuroscience (NUIN) program and an affiliated faculty of the Cognitive Science program.

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I am a Research Coordinator for the Gratton Lab. I grew up in Chicago and earned my bachelor’s degree from Northwestern University. I studied cognitive science with a concentration in communication sciences and disorders, and I have previous research experience in applied psychophysiology and behavioral medicine. In the future, I would like to attend graduate school for psychology, and I am particularly interested in studying individual brain differences and how they relate to learning disabilities.

I was raised mainly in Gambier, Ohio, and earned a bachelor’s degree in Neuroscience from the University of Pennsylvania in 2020. The majority of my undergraduate research focused on studying the factors that underly a lack of empathy in kids with callous-unemotional traits. I then spent a year as a post-bac at Northwestern with Thorsten Kahnt focused on neuroimaging and model-based decision making. I’m currently a first-year in NUIN rotating in the Gratton lab – my general interests are in using neuroimaging to look at learning, decision-making, and affect.

I am originally from Hermosillo, Sonora, Mexico, but I lived in Tucson, Arizona most of my life. I earned my bachelor’s degree in Neuroscience and Cognitive Science from the University of Arizona in 2018. My undergraduate research focused mainly on how our memory representations change the subjective appearance of the objects that we perceive. I am now a graduate student in the Gratton Lab and I am interested in exploring how functional networks can predict behavior and how these networks break down during aging and disease. My current projects focus on applying a precision approach to study age-related effects and hemispheric asymmetries in individual differences seen in brain organization.

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I am a Research Coordinator for the Gratton Lab. I grew up in Oswego, Illinois - a southwest Chicago suburb - and earned my bachelor’s degree from Florida State University in 2022 where I studied cell and molecular neuroscience. I have previous research experience in molecular neuroscience where I studied schizophrenia associated behavior and auditory sensory neurons in mice. In the future, I would like to attend graduate school for cognitive neuroscience and I am very interested in the effects of long-term behavior and other factors on individual differences in brain networks.

I am a Research Coordinator for the Gratton Lab. I grew up in Las Vegas, Nevada before earning my Bachelor of Science in Psychological Science from University of Nevada, Reno in 2022. During my undergrad, I worked in Dr. Edward Ester’s lab where we focused on how limits of our working memory constrain our ability to make decisions and plan actions. In the future, I hope to research how differences in brain networks relate to aging and working memory. I also plan to attend graduate school to further my research interests.