Team
Susan Whitfield-Gabrieli
Susan Whitfield-Gabrieli
Director, Northeastern University Biomedical Imaging Center
Susan Whitfield-Gabrieli is a Director of the NUBIC and a Professor in the Department of Psychology. The primary mission of her PEN Lab is to understand the brain basis of psychiatric disorders and to promote translation of this knowledge into clinical practice. Towards this end, she employs multimodal neuroimaging techniques to investigate the pathophysiology of psychiatric and neurodevelopmental disorders such as schizophrenia, depression, bipolar disorder, ADHD, autism, and dyslexia. Her goals are to discover biomarkers for improved diagnosis, early detection (potentiating early intervention and possibly prevention), prediction of therapeutic response (targeted towards precision medicine), and development of novel therapeutic techniques (e.g., real-time fMRI neurofeedback) with the hope of improving (or augmenting) currently available treatments. A secondary goal of her research is to develop functional imaging analysis tools to share with clinicians and the neuroimaging community at large.
Valur Olafsson
Valur Olafsson
Technical Director
Valur received his bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the University of Iceland, and master’s and doctoral degrees in Electrical Engineering: Systems from the University of Michigan. He is currently the Technical Director of the Northeastern University Biomedical Imaging Center at Northeastern University (NUBIC). Prior to this he was the Technical Director of the Neuroscience Imaging Center (NIC) at the University of Pittsburgh. In this role, as well as during his postdoctoral position at the Center for Functional MRI at UCSD, he gained invaluable exposure and training to the design, setup, testing, data collection and post-processing of MR data from neuroimaging studies. This has allowed him to collaborate with multiple research groups for their MRI neuroimaging needs, which resulted in numerous journal publications. His background is in signal processing, with a focus on developing MR physics-based imaging methods and image reconstruction algorithms for functional MRI using statistically-based signal models.
Fred Bidmead
Fred Bidmead
Lead MRI Research Technologist
Fred is an ARRT registered MRI Technologist with over 20 years of experience in the health care industry. He spent much of his career at Weill Cornell Imaging in New York City, gaining extensive technical expertise utilizing state‑of‑the‑art Siemens and GE systems. Prior to joining Northeastern, Fred was a Radiology Supervisor at Memorial Sloan Kettering, assisting with the development, revisioning, and implementation of departmental policies and protocols. During his time at Sloan Kettering, he earned his certification as a Magnetic Resonance Safety Officer and served on the hospital’s safety committee. In addition to coordinating the day‑to‑day functions of NUBIC, Fred works closely with research study groups to ensure imaging protocols are carried out safely and efficiently. He is committed to providing high-quality imaging while minimizing risks in the MRI environment.
Sheeba Arnold Anteraper
Sheeba Arnold Anteraper
Principal Research Scientist
Sheeba received her Bachelor’s degree from Cochin University of Science Technology, Master’s degree from New Jersey Institute of Technology, and Doctoral degree from Stony Brook University, all in Biomedical Engineering. She is currently a Principal Research Scientist at the Biomedical Imaging Center at Northeastern University, a Neuroimaging data scientist at the Alan and Lorraine Bressler Clinical and Research Program for Autism Spectrum Disorders at Massachusetts General Hospital, and a Research Affiliate at the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. As a biomedical researcher by training, she is passionate about translational neuroimaging and her goal is to apply optimized MRI acquisition methods and novel data analysis pipelines for the development of biomarkers.
Yoon Ji Lee
Yoon Ji Lee
Research Technician
Yoon graduated from Wellesley College with a B.A. in Neuroscience. During her undergraduate years, she explored various subfields of neuroscience through working at behavioral/cognitive/clinical neuroscience labs at Wellesley and MIT. She was also a visiting student at Seoul National University Hospital, where she learned to acquire and analyze neuroimaging(MRI,fMRI,DTI) and electrophysiology(EEG) data. She is passionate about discovering biomarkers and intervention methods for psychiatric disorders using neuroimaging techniques. She also has interests in education and public policy by which findings from neuroscience research can serve as a guide to a mentally healthy society. She hopes to pursue such passion and interests in graduate school.