NEUROSCIENCE RESEARCH DAY
FACULTY TALKS
Jonathan Lau, MD, PhD
Dr. Jon Lau is an MD and PhD trained neurosurgeon working as a clinician-researcher at Western University. He has just completed a functional and epilepsy neurosurgery fellowship at Emory University working with Robert E. Gross focused on surgical neuromodulation (deep brain stimulation, closed loop devices, stereotactic laser ablation, robotic surgery) for which he received the Royal College Detweiler traveling scholarship. He previously completed a doctoral degree in biomedical engineering in the lab of Terry M. Peters, where his research was focussed on ultra-high field (>= 7-Tesla; 7T) MRI for image-guided neurosurgery. He developed methods to quantify the accuracy of 7T and identified small brain structures previously only visible on histology (e.g. the zona incerta and hippocampal subfields). He develops neuroimaging workflows founded on open science principles, including the Anatomical Fiducials (AFIDs) project, which aims to enhance the transparency of reporting of stereotactic coordinates, detect brain misalignment, and teach neuroanatomy. For these projects, he was awarded a Canadian Institutes of Health Research Doctoral scholarship.
Sue Peters, PhD
Dr. Sue Peters is a Scientist at Parkwood Institute, and Assistant Professor in the School of Physical Therapy at Western University. She completed her PhD in Rehabilitation Sciences (Neuroimaging and Neurophysiology) at the University of British Columbia in 2018, and Master’s in Physical Therapy at Western University. As a physiotherapist in both public and private practice, Dr. Peters worked with people with a variety of neurological injuries, such as stroke. During clinical practice, Dr. Peters became curious with how the brain functions and recovers gait and standing balance after stroke. As such, her research aims to better understand the role of the brain and how it contributes to the motor control of gait and balance. When she isn’t in the lab or clinic, Dr. Peters loves to exercise and travel. Though she is originally from Ontario, she has really enjoyed hiking and camping in the beautiful mountains of BC.
Blake Butler, PhD
Dr. Blake Butler is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at Western University, and an investigator at the National Centre for Audiology and the Children's Health Research Institute. Dr. Butler and his research team are interested in the role of experience & plasticity in the typical and atypical development of sensory systems, with a focus on hearing loss and restoration. Their program combines behavioural, neuroimaging, and histological approaches in humans and animal models to examine how the structure and function of sensory cortices are shaped by early development.
Yalda Mohsenzadeh, PhD
Dr. Yalda Mohsenzadeh is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science and a core member of The Brain and Mind Institute at Western University, London, ON, Canada. She is also a faculty affiliate with Vector Institute for Artificial Intelligence, Toronto, ON, Canada. Before joining Western, she was a postdoctoral associate in the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL) and McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT, Cambridge, MA, USA. Prior to that, she was a postdoctoral fellow in the Center for Vision Research at York University, Toronto, ON, Canada. Yalda received her PhD in statistical machine learning in 2014 from Amirkabir University of Technology, Tehran, Iran. Her research is interdisciplinary, spanning artificial intelligence, computer vision and cognitive computational neuroscience, and investigating human perception and memory using a combination of human neuroimaging (fMRI and MEG/EEG), behavior, computational modeling, and machine learning.