Principle Investigator

Antonia N. Kaczkurkin

Antonia N. Kaczkurkin
Antonia N. Kaczkurkin

Antonia Kaczkurkin is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Vanderbilt University. She received her Master of Arts and Ph.D. degrees in clinical psychology from the University of Minnesota. She completed her APA-accredited clinical internship at Hennepin County Medical Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Pennsylvania before joining the faculty at Vanderbilt.

Dr. Kaczkurkin's research focuses on understanding the neurobiological mechanisms that underlie the development and maintenance of internalizing disorders. Her lab integrates multimodal measures, including structural and functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), psychophysiology, and advanced quantitative methods, to study anxiety, depression, and related internalizing symptoms. A central goal of this research is to clarify the neurobiological structure of internalizing psychopathology, including the extent to which symptom dimensions are associated with shared versus distinct neural and physiological mechanisms.

Her research program is organized around several interrelated aims: 1) characterizing the dimensional structure of internalizing symptoms; 2) examining brain-behavior associations in clinically heterogeneous samples with naturally occurring comorbidity; 3) identifying shared and dissociable neurobiological substrates across anxiety, depression, and related symptom dimensions; and 4) applying quantitative and machine-learning methods to characterize neurobiological heterogeneity within internalizing psychopathology.

CV.pdf

Post-Doctoral Researchers

Alireza Abbasi

Alireza is a postdoctoral researcher in the BRAINS Lab at Vanderbilt University. He received his B.Sc. in Electrical Engineering from Sharif University of Technology in Tehran, Iran, where he developed an early interest in neuroscience through EEG-based brain-computer interface research. He completed his Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering at Vanderbilt University, where his doctoral work focused on computational and statistical modeling of large-scale brain activity. His research involved developing synthetic-data and benchmark modeling approaches to understand how features such as hierarchical organization and low-dimensional manifold structure shape neural population dynamics. In the BRAINS Lab, Alireza contributes to projects involving EEG, MRI, and clinical data. His current work focuses on preprocessing and analyzing multimodal neuroimaging datasets to understand how neural measures relate to internalizing symptoms such as fear, distress, anxiety, and depression. He is especially interested in using computational modeling, statistical analysis, machine learning, and large language models to study neurobiological heterogeneity in psychopathology. Outside of research, Alireza enjoys cooking, traveling, and playing ping pong.

Graduate Students

Gabrielle Reimann

Gabrielle is a doctoral candidate in Vanderbilt's Clinical Science program, and she is currently completing her internship at the Alpert Medical School of Brown University. Gabrielle's research program strives to embrace psychiatric heterogeneity at both the symptom and neurobiological levels. She develops and leverages computational and quantitative tools to capture comorbidity, transdiagnostic symptoms, and other sources of complexity with the aim of identifying biobehavioral markers to improve mental health classification and its taxonomy. As a graduate student, she was awarded the NSF GRFP, APAGS Junior Scientist Fellowship, Ethel M. Wilson Scholarship, and Vanderbilt Award for Doctoral Discovery. She interned with the NIMH Machine Learning Team and continues to collaborate with this team remotely. Outside of academia, she loves hiking, volleyball, and cooking!

Camille J. Archer 

Camille is a fifth-year graduate student in Vanderbilt's Clinical Science program. She graduated Magna Cum Laude and received a B.A. in psychology and English from Vanderbilt University in 2020. While at Vanderbilt, Camille assisted with projects investigating the impact of parental internalizing symptoms on youth mental outcomes. After graduating, Camille spent two years as a post-baccalaureate research fellow at the National Institutes of Health where she contributed to behavioral and neuroimaging projects characterizing pediatric irritability, and the impact of adverse life events on irritability and other internalizing disorders. Currently, her primary research interests include using multimodal methods to investigate potential risk factors for psychopathology in youth. She is especially interested in examining the effects of irritability and environmental factors, such as early adversity, on the developmental course of internalizing symptoms in youth. Outside of academia, she loves reading modernist fiction and exploring local coffee shops!

Yulan Chen

Yulan is a doctoral student in Vanderbilt's Clinical Science Program in Psychological Sciences. Her research focuses on internalizing symptom development in adolescence and adulthood, with particular interests in neurocognitive processes and the effects of traumatic experiences. She integrates behavioral, neuroimaging, and statistical approaches to identify mechanisms in typical and atypical development that can inform early intervention strategies for supporting youth mental health. Yulan received her bachelor's degree in Psychology and Global Health from Northwestern University. After graduating, she was the research coordinator of the Vision and Neurodevelopment Lab at Stanford University under Dr. Anthony Norcia where she conducted EEG studies with babies, toddlers, and adults to investigate the development of disparity sensitivity and object perception. She earned her master's degree in Developmental Neuroscience and Psychopathology from University College London and Yale University where she conducted her dissertation with Dr. Youngsun Cho, studying how cognitive-motivational phenotypes in older children relate to later psychiatric symptoms and their underlying neural circuits. Outside of research, she enjoys playing the flute, exploring new hiking trails, and being a plant mom.

Ashna Ramiah

Ashna is a first year PhD student in the Clinical Science program at Vanderbilt. She graduated from Washington University in St. Louis with a BA in Philosophy-Neuroscience-Psychology: Cognitive Neuroscience. After graduation, she worked as a research assistant at WashU Medicine in the child psychiatry department, contributing to neuroimaging, psychophysiological, and behavioral projects. Her research interests involve understanding transdiagnostic neural and neurocognitive risk profiles for internalizing pathology and suicidality in youth using dimensional and computational approaches. She is especially interested in using large neuroimaging datasets and developing data-driven theoretical models of risk. Outside of research, she loves puzzles, playing the piano, and trivia.

Lab Coordinator

Kaitlynn E. Ellis

Kaitlynn is the lab coordinator at Vanderbilt's Clinical Science BRAINS Lab. She earned her B.S. in Neurobiology and Psychology from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 2022. As an undergraduate, she worked in Dr. Brittany Travers' lab, assisting with research on motor and brain development in individuals with autism spectrum disorder. Following graduation, Kaitlynn served as a lab manager in Dr. Haley Vlach's lab, where she contributed to projects examining cognitive development in early childhood. At the BRAINS Lab, Kaitlynn oversees the day-to-day operations of several research projects. Her responsibilities include recruiting and screening participants, preparing participants for EEG and MRI sessions, administering E-Prime tasks during data collection, conducting cognitive assessments, and managing participant compensation and course credit. Kaitlynn plans to pursue a Ph.D. in clinical psychology, with a research focus on how early life stress influences brain development and contributes to the emergence of internalizing disorders.

Undergraduate Research Students (Honors, Directed Study, Summer Programs)

  • Cristina Del Valle Meza (STEM Transition and Retention (START) program)

  • Samuel Chan (STEM Transition and Retention (START) program) 

  • Oghenefejiro Akpoyovware (STEM Transition and Retention (START) program)

  • Mujalinda Deu (STEM Transition and Retention (START) program) 

  • Siri Arkatala (STEM Transition and Retention (START) program)

  • Yunge (Charlie) Lu (Directed Study; Vanderbilt Undergraduate Summer Research Program (VUSRP))

Lab Alumni

Graduate Students

  • Leighton Durham
    Leighton graduated from Vanderbilt University in the Summer of 2025. She currently holds post-doctoral position at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.
  • Hee Jung Jeong
    Hee Jung graduated from Vanderbilt University in the Summer of 2025. She joined the faculty at Sogang University in Seoul, South Korea as an assistant professor in Clinical Psychology. There she will be leading the Stress and Resilience (STAR) lab.

Full-time Lab Coordinators

  • Shuti Wang
  • Randolph Dupont

Undergraduate Research Students (Honors, Directed Study, Summer Programs)

  • Ge-Ho Yang (STEM Transition and Retention (START) program)

  • Shayaan Essani (Psychology Neuroscience Summer Fellow) 
  • Gabrielle Baugh (Summer Student)
  • Karen Herrera (STEM Transition and Retention (START) program)
  • Megha Duvvuri (STEM Transition and Retention (START) program)
  • Sochanita Deu (STEM Transition and Retention (START) program)
  • Amar Camara (Psychology Neuroscience Summer Fellow; Neuroscience Capstone)
  • Cindy Jaramillo (STEM Transition and Retention (START) program)
  • Myrsine Kostoulas (Visting Scholar)
  • Nikita Rohila (Directed Study)
  • Devisi Ashar (Psychology Honors)
  • Krisha Shah (Psychology Honors)
  • Fanual Berhe (Neuroscience Capstone)
  • Isabella Jackson (Psychology Neuroscience Summer Fellow; Maximizing Access to Research Careers (MARC) program)
  • Zoe Chang (Summer Research Early Identification Program)
  • Ralph Francois (STEM Transition and Retention (START) program)
  • Amy Milewski (Psychology Honors)
  • Rebecca Keith (Psychology Honors)
  • Chinyelu Iwenofu (STEM Transition and Retention (START) program)
  • Julia Pines (Psychology Honors)
  • Xiaoyu (Jojo) Dong (Psychology Honors)
  • Emily Micciche (Psychology Honors)
  • Farrah Stone (Directed Study)

Undergraduate Research Assistants

  • Cynthia Zhou
  • Lauren Epstein
  • Grace Callahan
  • Bergen Allee
  • Teffina Zhu Zheng
  • Ruhi Patel
  • Charlotte Wulf
  • Victoria He
  • Sarah Woronko
  • Ashley Kim
  • Charlotte Harrington
  • Dillon Plageman
  • Alexandra Dulman
  • Daniel Nicastro
  • Matthew Ellis
  • Hannah Gelnaw
  • Jasmine Aggarwal