Franco Pestilli
Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Texas at Austin, Franco holds a Ph.D. from New York University and a B.A. from the University of Rome La Sapienza. Before that, he was Postdoctoral Researcher at Columbia University, Research Associate at Stanford University and faculty at Indiana University. Franco’s research spans multiple disciplines such as psychology, computer science, engineering and neuroscience. At the University of Texas at Austin, Franco teaches Neuroscience and Data Science. He is affiliated member of the Center For Perceptual Systems, and Executive Board Member of The Center for Theoretical and Computational Neuroscience. He is Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science and Psychonomics Society and editorial board member of the Spring Nature Journals Scientific Data, and Scientific Reports. Franco has received the Microsoft Investigator Fellowship, gifts from the Kavli Foundation and the APS Janet Taylor Spence Award for Transformative Early Career Contributions. Franco is founder and director of the Advanced Computational Neuroscience Network and brainlife.io. He is currently, Chair Elect of the International Brain Initiative Data Governance and Sharing Working Group.
Team Below are the wonderful students, postdocs, staff members and faculty colleagues that make our science possible.
Cat Leal
Undergraduate Research Assistant (NeuroImaging, Machine Learning, Tractography)
Alisha Flexwala
Undergraduate Research Assistant (Literature Review, Deep Learning Models)
Diversity It takes the world to understand the brain, and the world is a village rich with people of different backgrounds.
We believe that a good lab can only flourish if it embraces the ideas and backgrounds of a truly diverse set of talented people — of every background, race, ethnicity and life experience. We like to joke that our work has Italian design, Japanese technology and is made in America. Our PI is originally from Italy and we have a software engineer from Japan, but the rest of our lab is a diverse group of scientists as well. Our lab is a mix of genders, identities, ages, nationalities, and ethnicities, all working together to advance the understanding of the brain. Lab members and collaborators hail from the USA, Europe, South America and Asia.
Inclusivity Inclusion means open access to resources and a safe place for all
We are committed to make educational and computational resources available to everyone that is interested in neuroscience, including communities that would otherwise not have access to these resources. Using data, analyses, and tutorials available on brainlife.io, we can teach neuroscience at institutions that do not have a neuroscience program. For instance, our brainlife.io team is developing a project in collaboration with Lawrence Technological University (LTU) to connect minority-serving institutions with neuroscience data and advanced computing resources. This project will leverage brainlife.io to democratize neuroscience education bringing brain understanding closer to individuals with less privileged access to data, tools and knowledge.
Collaborators
Aina Puce
Eleanor Cox Riggs Professor, Psychological and Brain Sciences at Indiana University
Together we are integrating MEG and EEG data processing streams on brainlife.io.
Daniel J. McDonald
Associate Professor, Department of Statistics, The University of British Columbia
Together we are developing approaches to tractography methods optimization.
Michael Hanke
Group Leader Jülich Brain Center (Germany)
Together we are developing technology to connect data across the globe using DataLad.org and brainlife.io.
Nathalie George
Laboratory Director Paris Brain Institute
Together we are developing tools to lower the barriers of entry to processing electrophysiological data using brainlife.io.
Nicholas Port
Associate Professor of Vision Science and Neuroscience at Indiana University
Together we are trying to understand brain concussion using brainlife.io.
Richard Betzel
Assistant Professor Indiana University
Together we are developing tools to lower the barriers of entry to network neuroscience using brainlife.io
Sarah Heilbronner
Assistant professor University of Minnesota
Together we are working on understanding the connectivity of the Parietal cortex.
Wei Tang
Assistant Scientist, Department of Computer Science, Indiana University
Together we are developing approaches to tract the connectivity of the Parietal cortex using brainlife.io
Yaroslav Halchenko
Research Assistant Professor Dartmuth College
Together we are developing technology to connect data across the globe using DataLad.org and brainlife.io
Daniel Levitas
Graduate student at Indiana University
He collaborates with the lab to develop neuroinformatics tools.
Alumni
Sophia Vinci-Booher
NSF SBE Postdoctoral Researcher
After graduating from the lab, Sophia started her own lab at the Vanderbilt University.
Sandra Hanekamp
Postdoctoral Researcher (Vision Science and white matter)
After graduating from the lab, Sandra will start a position at NordicNeuroLab.
Brent C. McPherson
Ph.D student
After graduating from the lab, Brent took a Postdoctoral Researcher position at McGill University (Montreal).
Daniel N. Bullock
Ph.D student
After graduating from the lab, Dan took on a position as Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Minnesota.
Josiah Leong
Postdoc
After working in the lab, Josiah started his own lab as Assitant Professor at the University of Arkansas.
Ilaria Sani
Visiting postdoc
Ilaria was visiting from the Laboratory of Winrich Freiwald at the Rockefeller University. After visiting the lab, Ilaria took a Research Scientist position at the University of Geneva.
Ricardo Fabrega
Undergraduate research assistant
After leaving the lab, Ricardo took on a prestigious Medical Student Scholarship at the F. Edward Hébert School of Medicine of the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, Maryland.
Antonio Fernandez
NIH Postdoctoral Fellow.
After leaving the lab, Dr. Fernandez started working as UI/UX Researcher in the industry.
Yiming Qian
Undergraduate research assistant.
After leaving the lab, Yiming started Graduate School at Penn State University.
Lindsey Kitchell
Ph.D. student
After leaving the lab, Lindsey took on a position as Senior Professional Scientist at Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory.
Shiloh Echevarria-Cooper
Undergraduate research assistant
After leaving the lab, Shiloh started Graduate School at Northwestern University.
Cesar F. Caiafa
Visiting scientist
After working in the lab, Cesar went back to Argentina to work as at the Argentinean Radioastronomy Institute (IAR) and as an Adjunct Professor at the Faculty of Engineering, University of Buenos Aires.
Aman Arya
Undergraduate research assistant, NSF Summer Intern for brainlife.io
After leaving the lab, Aman took a job at Amazon.
