Meet Our Team | Center for Pain and the Brain PAIN Research Group Research | Research Centers | Research

Lab Members

	David Borsook, MD, PhD Harvard Catalyst \| Email Dr. Borsook is co-director of the Center for Pain and the Brain, which encompasses Boston Children's Hospital, Massachusetts General Hospital, and McLean Hospital. He is an Associate Professor in Anesthesiology at Harvard Medical School. As a leading researcher in the field of pain, Dr. Borsook has helped improve understanding of healthy and unhealthy neural pain networks in both humans and animal models.
	Lino Becerra, PhD Harvard Catalyst \| Email Dr. Becerra is co-director of the Center for Pain and the Brain, which spans Boston Children's Hospital, McLean Hospital, and Massachusetts General Hospital. He is an Associate Professor in Anesthesiology at Harvard Medical School. He trained in biophysics at the University of Illinois. Dr. Becerra heads the animal imaging program. These projects complement the human imaging research. Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging Profile
	Eric Moulton, OD, PhD Harvard Catalyst \| Email Dr. Moulton is an Assistant Professor of Anesthesiology at Harvard Medical School, and is a research associate at Boston Children's Hospital. He earned his OD from the New England College of Optometry, and his PhD in Neuroscience from the University of Maryland, Baltimore. His scientific interests are in sensory processing and its translation into perception/behavior. He has been awarded an R21 Exploratory/Developmental Research Grant Award from the National Cancer Institute to determine the impact of cerebellar tumor resection on pain in pediatric patients. He has also been a recipient of a K01 Mentored Research Scientist Development Award from the National Institute on Drug Abuse to assess the relationship between pain and the cerebellum in healthy volunteers.
	Clas Linnman, PhD Harvard Catalyst \| Email Dr. Linnman's area of expertise is in Positron Emission Tomography (PET) and functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) of anxiety and pain. His research has focused on patients with whiplash associated disorder, social anxiety disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder as well as healthy controls. Dr. Linnman has employed multi-tracer PET protocols, fMRI, and combinations of FDG PET and fMRI to assess brain function in these patient populations. He has an interest in fear learning and extinction, gender related differences in emotional and pain processing, neuroinflammation and glial function, interactions between central and peripheral pain mechanisms, and pain in psychiatric disease.
	Laura Simons, PhD Harvard Catalyst \| Email Dr. Simons is an assistant professor of psychology in the Department of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and a staff psychologist in the Pain Treatment Service at Boston Children’s Hospital. She is a committed researcher and clinician with a primary focus on assessment and development of treatment interventions to improve the lives of youth with chronic pain. Laura’s program of research encompasses therapeutic program development and evaluation, coping with pain, parent responses to pain, anxiety/fear, psychophysiology, and assessment scale development with pediatric populations. She has received several grants and awards to support her research efforts, with a recently awarded K23 Career Development Award from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) to examine the neural basis of pain-related fear and treatment response among children and adolescent with chronic pain.
	Dusica Bajic, MD, PhD Harvard Catalyst \| Email Dusica Bajic, MD, PhD joined P.A.I.N. group in 2012 as a proactive clinician scientist . She created a key program using infant animal models to determine how morphine acts in the developing brain that is different from that in adult. Investigation of the supraspinal mechanisms of age-dependent development of negative behavioral effects associated with prolonged opioid administration is crucial to better understand the actions of opioid medications in human infants and children during surgery, critical illness or cancer treatment. This is an important new area of research that may provide novel insights into mechanisms of prolonged opioid effects that will lead to novel clinical therapies that differ with age.
	Christopher Aasted, PhD Harvard Catalyst \| Email Dr. Aasted is an Instructor in Anaesthesia at Harvard Medical School and a Staff Scientist in Anesthesiology at Boston Children’s Hospital. He earned his PhD in Engineering from the University of Denver for his work on hybrid sensing and adaptive control for direct brain actuation of artificial limbs. He is currently part of three projects on the application of functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) for the purpose of detecting brain activity associated with pain processing. Dr. Aasted is the principle investigator on one of these projects, in which we are recording fNIRS data pre-, intra-, and post-operatively in order to detect brain activation resulting from procedurally induced pain as well as to investigate changes in resting state networks. He also collaborates with the New York Institute of Technology on the application of machine learning algorithms for bio-inspired sensing and decision-making in unmanned aerial systems research.
	Nathalie Erpelding, PhD Email Dr. Erpelding is a Research Fellow in Anaesthesia at Harvard Medical School and a Research Fellow in Anesthesiology at Boston Children's Hospital. She earned her PhD in Psychology from the University of Luxembourg and gained extensive MRI expertise at the Toronto Western Research Institute. At Children's Hospital, her current research projects focus on complex regional pain syndrome and headaches in children and adolescents.
	Vanda Faria, PhD
	Sophie Wilcox, PhD
	Nadia Barakat, PhD Email Nadia Barakat, PhD is a postdoctoral fellow at Children’s hospital of Boston. Her professional aspiration is to employ extensive knowledge of engineering principles to improve medical outcomes in the field of pediatric imaging. Her research efforts focus on establishing advanced MRI techniques as neurodiagnostic tools in examining the pediatric spinal cord and in the characterization of small nerve bundles. She has contributed to identifying the feasibility and reliability of DTI in the pediatric population and has shown differences in DTI values between children with traumatic spinal cord injuries and controls, and has shown good correlation with standardized clinical endpoints. Nadia is a recipient of ASNR’s Derek Harwood-Nash Award for best paper in pediatric neuroradiology and a recent recipient of NIH K25 research grant. Nadia’s main focus is to improve the health of patients with neurological disabilities with more efficacious technologies and imaging techniques.
	Duncan Hidkinson, PhD

Research Assistants

	Corey Kronman, MS Email Corey graduated from Boston University with a Bachelors of Science in Biomedical Engineering in 2013, followed by a Masters of Science in Medical Sciences in 2015. He is involved in an fMRI study looking into pain-related fear learning in children, adolescents, and young adults who are experiencing chronic pain.
	Danielle Lee, BA Email Danielle graduated from Harvard University in 2016 with a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology. She is involved in an fMRI imaging project investigating adults who suffer from migraines.
	Allison Ludwick, MSc Email Allison graduated from University College London in 2014 with a Master's in Clinical Neuroscience. She is involved in fMRI imaging of children, adolescents and young adults who suffer from migraines.
	Tali Rasooly, BA Email Tali graduated from University of Maryland in 2011 with a Bachelors of Arts in Psychology. She is involved in an MRI study looking at adolescents with neuropathic pain and Chronic Regional Pain Syndrome, as well as children and adolescents who suffer from abdominal pain.
	Helen Santoro, BA Email Helen graduated from Hamilton College in 2015 with a Bachelor of Arts in Neuroscience. She is currently involved in an fMRI study looking at children, adolescents and young adults who suffer from post-concussive headaches.
	Katie Silva, BS Email Katie graduated from Johns Hopkins University in 2015 with a Bachelor of Science in Neuroscience. She is currently involved in an MRI project investigating the role of the cerebellum in pain processing in children and young adults.
	Sarah Steele, BS Email Sarah graduated from the University of Mississippi in 2015 with a Bachelor of Science in Biology. She is currently involved in several projects using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) for the purpose of detecting brain activity associated with perioperative pain processing.

Collaborators

Robert Edwards, PhD
Dr. Edwards is a licensed clinical psychologist in the Pain Management Center at Brigham & Women’s Hospital / Harvard Medical School. He attended the University of Alabama at Birmingham, completing a Ph.D. in Medical Psychology and a Master’s in Public Health. He then completed a postdoctoral fellowship in Pain Psychology at Johns Hopkins, before joining the faculty in Psychiatry there. He moved to Brigham & Women’s Hospital in 2008. Hisresearch focuses on biobehavioral aspects of acute and chronic pain. Specifically, he studies individual differences in pain responses, and the neurobiological mechanisms by which psychosocial processes shape those individual differences. Some of his current NIH-funded work focuses on the impact of pain-related catastrophizing on neuroendocrine and inflammatory responses to pain, as well as individual differences in central nervous system pain processing, and their implications for long-term pain-related outcomes. He is involved in several studies that use functional neuroimaging techniques to assess the neurobiology of pain-related thoughts and emotions.

Igor Elman, MD
Dr. Elman is an Associate Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. He was trained at the National Institute of Mental Health and is a Diplomate of the American Board of Psychiatry with a subspecialty certification in Addiction Psychiatry. Dr. Elman's research is focused on the role of reward and motivational systems in the pathophysiology of severe neuropsychiatric disorders, including addictions, schizophrenia and post-traumatic stress disorder.

Christopher Gilligan, MD
Dr. Gilligan is a clinician researcher in the Department of Anesthesia at Boston Children’s Hospital, and is the Medical Director for the MGH Center for Pain Medicine. He obtained his MD from the Yale University School of Medicine, completed his residency at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and his fellowship at Massachusetts General Hospital. His research focuses on clinical trials of new interventions, devices and medications for the treatment of pain.

Cenk Ayata, MD
Massachusetts General Hospital
Harvard Medical School

Charles Berde, MD, PhD
Boston Children's Hospital
Harvard Medical School

David Boas, PhD
Massachusetts General Hospital
Harvard Medical School

Gary Brenner, MD, PhD
Massachusetts General Hospital
Harvard Medical School

Rami Burstein, PhD
Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital
Harvard Medical School

David Dodick, MD
Mayo Clinic

Torsten Gordh, MD, PhD
Uppsala Berzelii Technology Centre for Neurodiagnostics
Uppsala University

P. Ellen Grant, MD, MA
Boston Children's Hospital
Harvard Medical School

Jacob Hooker, PhD
Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging
Harvard Medical School

Rajan Patel, PhD
Emory University

Frank Porreca, PhD
University of Arizona

Andrew Prescott, PhD
University of Utah

Perry Renshaw, MD, PhD
University of Utah

Jeremy Schmahmann, MD
Massachusetts General Hospital
Harvard Medical School

Andrew M. Strassman, PhD
Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
Harvard Medical School

Jaymin Upadhyay, PhD
Abbott Laboratories

Roger D. Weiss, MD
McLean Hospital
Harvard Medical School

Alumni

Cristina Borras, PhD
University of Barcelona

Alexandre F. DaSilva, DDS, PhD
University of Michigan

Braden Kuo, MD
Massachusetts General Hospital

Gautam Pendse, MA, MS
Statistical Software Developer at Mathworks

Alexander Ploghaus, PhD

Jennifer Potter, PhD, MPH
University of Texas Health Science Center, San Antoni

Karl Schmidt, PhD
inviCRO, LLC

Marnie Shaw, PhD
University of Melbourne

Leslie Shelton, PhD

Esteban Toledo, MD

Irene Tracey, DPhil
Director of Oxford Centre for Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging of the Brain
Nuffield Professor of Anaesthetic Science

Jaymin Upadhyay, PhD
Senior Scientist II at Translational Sciences

Former RAs

Where did they go?

Lianne Jenkins - MPH, Brown University

Kim Harter - MD, University of Massachusetts Medical School, Worcester

Christina Geatrakas -MD, Syracuse University Medical School

Julie Gostic - MS in Radiological Science & Protection, Universtiy of Massachusetts/PhD in Radiochemistry, University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Lito Papanicolas -MBBS, University of Adelaide

Susie Morris - MD, Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University

Matthew Aiello-Lammens - PhD Candidate in Ecology & Evolution, SUNY Stony Brook

Sadie Cole - PhD Candidate in Psychology, Harvard University

Shannon Tully - MPH/MBA, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health

Diana Wallin -PhD Candidate in Neuroscience, University of Minnesota

Will Harris - MS Candidate in Biostatistics, UCLA

Julie Anderson - MA in Epidemiology, University of Illinois at Chicago

Pei-Ching Chang -PhD Candidate in Physiology, Northwestern Universit

Jaime Knudsen - PhD Candidate in Molecular and Cellular Biology, Brandeis University

James Bishop - PhD Candidate in Neuroscience, University of Vermont, Burlington

Lauren Nutile - MD Candidate, VCU School of Medicine

Athena Drosos - MS Candidate in Physician Assistant Studies, Albany Medical College

Margaret Grant - PhD Candidate, University of Virginia

Jennifer Brawn - DPhil Candidate in Clinical Neuroscience, University of Oxford, UK

Gabi Barmettler - MD Candidate, Thomas Jefferson University

Melissa Pielech - PhD Candidate in Clinical Psychology, University of New Mexico

Adrianna Johnson - MD/PhD Candidate, University of Pittsburgh

Paul Serrano - DMD Candidate, Tufts University

Michael Craig - PhD Candidate, Cambridge University

Molly Basch - PhD Candidate in Clinical Psychology, University of Florida

Rosanna Veggeberg - MS Candidate in Clinical Investigation

	David Borsook, MD, PhD Harvard Catalyst \| Email Dr. Borsook is co-director of the Center for Pain and the Brain, which encompasses Boston Children's Hospital, Massachusetts General Hospital, and McLean Hospital. He is an Associate Professor in Anesthesiology at Harvard Medical School. As a leading researcher in the field of pain, Dr. Borsook has helped improve understanding of healthy and unhealthy neural pain networks in both humans and animal models.
	Lino Becerra, PhD Harvard Catalyst \| Email Dr. Becerra is co-director of the Center for Pain and the Brain, which spans Boston Children's Hospital, McLean Hospital, and Massachusetts General Hospital. He is an Associate Professor in Anesthesiology at Harvard Medical School. He trained in biophysics at the University of Illinois. Dr. Becerra heads the animal imaging program. These projects complement the human imaging research. Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging Profile
	Eric Moulton, OD, PhD Harvard Catalyst \| Email Dr. Moulton is an Assistant Professor of Anesthesiology at Harvard Medical School, and is a research associate at Boston Children's Hospital. He earned his OD from the New England College of Optometry, and his PhD in Neuroscience from the University of Maryland, Baltimore. His scientific interests are in sensory processing and its translation into perception/behavior. He has been awarded an R21 Exploratory/Developmental Research Grant Award from the National Cancer Institute to determine the impact of cerebellar tumor resection on pain in pediatric patients. He has also been a recipient of a K01 Mentored Research Scientist Development Award from the National Institute on Drug Abuse to assess the relationship between pain and the cerebellum in healthy volunteers.
	Clas Linnman, PhD Harvard Catalyst \| Email Dr. Linnman's area of expertise is in Positron Emission Tomography (PET) and functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) of anxiety and pain. His research has focused on patients with whiplash associated disorder, social anxiety disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder as well as healthy controls. Dr. Linnman has employed multi-tracer PET protocols, fMRI, and combinations of FDG PET and fMRI to assess brain function in these patient populations. He has an interest in fear learning and extinction, gender related differences in emotional and pain processing, neuroinflammation and glial function, interactions between central and peripheral pain mechanisms, and pain in psychiatric disease.
	Laura Simons, PhD Harvard Catalyst \| Email Dr. Simons is an assistant professor of psychology in the Department of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and a staff psychologist in the Pain Treatment Service at Boston Children’s Hospital. She is a committed researcher and clinician with a primary focus on assessment and development of treatment interventions to improve the lives of youth with chronic pain. Laura’s program of research encompasses therapeutic program development and evaluation, coping with pain, parent responses to pain, anxiety/fear, psychophysiology, and assessment scale development with pediatric populations. She has received several grants and awards to support her research efforts, with a recently awarded K23 Career Development Award from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) to examine the neural basis of pain-related fear and treatment response among children and adolescent with chronic pain.
	Dusica Bajic, MD, PhD Harvard Catalyst \| Email Dusica Bajic, MD, PhD joined P.A.I.N. group in 2012 as a proactive clinician scientist . She created a key program using infant animal models to determine how morphine acts in the developing brain that is different from that in adult. Investigation of the supraspinal mechanisms of age-dependent development of negative behavioral effects associated with prolonged opioid administration is crucial to better understand the actions of opioid medications in human infants and children during surgery, critical illness or cancer treatment. This is an important new area of research that may provide novel insights into mechanisms of prolonged opioid effects that will lead to novel clinical therapies that differ with age.
	Christopher Aasted, PhD Harvard Catalyst \| Email Dr. Aasted is an Instructor in Anaesthesia at Harvard Medical School and a Staff Scientist in Anesthesiology at Boston Children’s Hospital. He earned his PhD in Engineering from the University of Denver for his work on hybrid sensing and adaptive control for direct brain actuation of artificial limbs. He is currently part of three projects on the application of functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) for the purpose of detecting brain activity associated with pain processing. Dr. Aasted is the principle investigator on one of these projects, in which we are recording fNIRS data pre-, intra-, and post-operatively in order to detect brain activation resulting from procedurally induced pain as well as to investigate changes in resting state networks. He also collaborates with the New York Institute of Technology on the application of machine learning algorithms for bio-inspired sensing and decision-making in unmanned aerial systems research.
	Nathalie Erpelding, PhD Email Dr. Erpelding is a Research Fellow in Anaesthesia at Harvard Medical School and a Research Fellow in Anesthesiology at Boston Children's Hospital. She earned her PhD in Psychology from the University of Luxembourg and gained extensive MRI expertise at the Toronto Western Research Institute. At Children's Hospital, her current research projects focus on complex regional pain syndrome and headaches in children and adolescents.
	Vanda Faria, PhD
	Sophie Wilcox, PhD
	Nadia Barakat, PhD Email Nadia Barakat, PhD is a postdoctoral fellow at Children’s hospital of Boston. Her professional aspiration is to employ extensive knowledge of engineering principles to improve medical outcomes in the field of pediatric imaging. Her research efforts focus on establishing advanced MRI techniques as neurodiagnostic tools in examining the pediatric spinal cord and in the characterization of small nerve bundles. She has contributed to identifying the feasibility and reliability of DTI in the pediatric population and has shown differences in DTI values between children with traumatic spinal cord injuries and controls, and has shown good correlation with standardized clinical endpoints. Nadia is a recipient of ASNR’s Derek Harwood-Nash Award for best paper in pediatric neuroradiology and a recent recipient of NIH K25 research grant. Nadia’s main focus is to improve the health of patients with neurological disabilities with more efficacious technologies and imaging techniques.
	Duncan Hidkinson, PhD

Center for Pain and the Brain PAIN Research Group | Meet Our Team

Lab Members

Research Assistants

Collaborators

Alumni

Former RAs