People

Stephanie Chu is a 2nd year neuroscience PhD student mentored by Drs. Reza Tadayon-Nejad and Andrew Leuchter. She is interested in using brain stimulation, functional neuroimaging, as well as electrophysiology to study brain dynamics within psychiatric disorders. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and electroencephalography (EEG), she examines the effects of brain stimulation on network dynamics, clinical outcomes, and decision-making measures within OCD and depression patients. In collaboration with the O’Doherty lab at Caltech, she also explores the intrinsic brain networks involved in decision-making by analyzing resting state fMRI data within healthy participants and psychiatric patients. Previously, Stephanie has worked as a research assistant in the Dementia Imaging Genetics lab at UCSF under the mentorship of Dr. Suzee Lee.

Emmily Hovhannisyan graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) with a B.A. in psychology. As a research associate for Dr. Tadayon-Nejad, Emmily manages multiple studies. She primarily works on our projects examining the impact of neuromodulation on decision-making in obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Additionally, she investigates the use of neuromodulation as a treatment for depression. Email: EHovhannisyan@mednet.ucla.edu

Joel Diaz is a research associate in the Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences. He graduated from Florida State University with a B.S. in Psychology and is currently enrolled in a Masters in Data Science program at Lewis University. He has a broad range of research interests, but his focus is on the use of psychophysiological measures and neuromodulation techniques in the study and treatment of neuropsychiatric disorders. Joel currently leads neuromodulation sessions for our OCD studies and performs DTI analysis for motivation-reward brain circuitry.

Dov Lerman-Sinkoff MD PhD (he/him) is a PGY3 resident in the UCLA Psychiatry Research Track interested in improving the understanding of brain-behavior relationships implicated in cognitive alterations in psychiatric illnesses and the use of neuromodulation to improve functional outcomes. He obtained his BSE in Biomedical Engineering with a focus in Electrical Engineering at the University of Michigan. He obtained his MD and PhD in Biomedical Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis under the mentorship of Dr. Deanna Barch. During his PhD, he used multimodal neuroimaging methods to simultaneously decompose structural, resting state functional connectivity, and task functional MRI data and examined relationships between the identified imaging patterns and cognitive control performance in a healthy community participant sample from the Human Connectome Project and in a transdiagnostic sample of persons with psychosis. Here at UCLA, he is working with Dr. Reza Tadayon-Nejad to study decision making in obsessive-compulsive disorder and the use of non-invasive neuromodulation to alter neural activity with the goal of lessening symptom burden and improving performance.

Zoe Hartman is a behavioral therapist working at the UCLA OCD Intensive Treatment Program, providing both individual and group therapy. She is also involved in the recruitment and psychologic assessment process for various ongoing research projects, including Dr. Tadayon-Nejad’s OCD research studies. She is a graduate of Columbia University School of Social Work.