Team Members

Lab Director

Aga Agnieszka (Aga) Burzynska
aga.burzynska@colostate.edu

BRAiN Lab Team

Beatriz C Grullon, MS, PPC

Clinical Mental Health Counselor, specializing in Trauma, Wyoming

Responsible for: Participant recruitment, screening and retention, cognitive testing (NIH Toolbox), data curation, MRI data analysis (DTI and white matter hyperintensity volume)

Working towards: Counselor Licensure, PhD to study how trauma affects the brain, trauma prediction and prevention

In my free time: I enjoy running and yoga, spending time with friends and family, and appreciating everything that life has to offer.

I am a Cognitive Neuroscience Ph.D. student specialized in white matter neuroimaging and aging research at CSU. I received a medical doctor degree from the Universidad Del Zulia in Maracaibo, Venezuela. I started working in the field of aging in medical school, where my focus was on understanding how chronic diseases such as hypertension can increase the risk of developing neurological disease.

At CSU, I am currently studying how aging white matter changes as a result of exercise interventions. In the future, I want to be a physician-scientist in the field of aging and dementia.

In my free time, I enjoying hiking and climbing mountains. I love to play and sing Venezuelan music on the guitar.

Undergraduate Research Assistants

Michelle Hefner

I am an undergraduate student studying biomedical engineering and chemical & biological engineering at CSU. I am currently working on the multimodal fusion of neuroimaging data with some machine learning approaches. I’m interested in computational neuroscience, neuroimaging, and machine learning. My future plans are to pursue a Ph.D. involving these interests.

Jake Lonergan

Undergraduate student (Neuroscience Major: Cognitive and Behavioral concentration)

Responsible for: Cognitive testing (NIH Toolbox), data curation, MRI data analysis (Volumetric analyses using FSL-FAST)

Ema Lukinic

Undergraduate student (Neuroscience Major: Cognitive and Behavioral concentration)

Responsible for: Recruitment, Cognitive testing (NIH Toolbox), data curation, MRI data analysis (Surface-based analyses using Freesurfer)

Working towards: Medical School

BRAiN Lab Alumni

Sandra Diaz-Encina (B.S. in Human Development and Family Studies, 2019, CSU)
Jane Gill (B.S. in Neuroscience, 2018, CSU), now an MS student in Public Health, Management and Policy, Oregon Health and Science University-PSU’s School of Public Health
Jenna Klippenstein (B.S. in Psychology, 2017, CSU), now a graduate student (PhD) at the University of California, Riverside
Sara Vlajic (B.S. in Biochemistry, 2018, CSU), now an MS student in Biostatistics at Oregon Health & Science University and a Senior Research Assistant for OHSU School of Nursing
Yuqin Jiao (M.S. in Applied Developmental Science, 2019, CSU), now PhD student in Applied Developmental Science, HDFS, CSU
Megan Wadley (B.S. Psychology, 2016, outstanding graduate student in Occupational Therapy, 2019, CSU)

Human Development and Family Studies Team Members