Athens Personnel

Dr. Brett Clementz

Principal Investigator

Dr. Jennifer McDowell

Principal Investigator

Courtney Burton, BS

Graduate Researcher

Courtney graduated from Washington College in 2012 with a Bachelor of Science degree in Psychology/Behavioral Neuroscience. She then worked as a research specialist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign before joining Dr. McDowell’s lab at UGA in August 2014 as a graduate student. Here she studies white matter structure in psychiatric and healthy groups.

Her responsibilities for the BSNIP2 project include collecting clinical data, collecting MRI data, and analyzing DTI data from all sites.

Beryl Huang, MS

Research Assistant

Prior to joining the BSNIP team, Beryl graduated in 2013 with a Master’s degree in neuroscience from UT Dallas.  Her focus was GABAAR synaptic expression in rat brain following acute stress.  From 2013 to 2015, she worked in Dr. Tamminga’s division at UT Southwestern Medical Center as a research technician, primarily collected and managed data for PARDIP.

After becoming a Ph.D student in Dr. Clementz’s lab in August 2015, Beryl has been pursuing two interests: 1) inter-modality networks among psychosis biomarkers, and 2) abnormal emotional response and cognitive control in psychosis.  In addition to analysis, she collects EEG and ET data for BSNIP2.

Matthew Hudgens-Haney, MA

Graduate Researcher

Matt graduated from the University of Alabama with a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy and Chemistry in 2008 and from Georgia State University with a Master of Arts in Neurophilosophy in 2010.

In the lab of Drs. Brett Clementz and Jennifer McDowell, his research focuses on neural oscillatory dysfunction contributes to various neuropathologies, including psychosis, gambling addiction, and narcissism. His current responsibility in BSNIP2 is EEG acquisition.

Brooke Jackson, BS

Graduate Researcher

Brooke graduated from the University of Florida in 2015 with a Bachelor of Science degree in Psychology. She worked as a research assistant for a neuro-addiction lab at the University of Florida until she joined Dr. McDowell’s research team at the University of Georgia in June 2016. Her research focuses on cognitive impairments in psychosis.

Her responsibilities for BSNIP2 include administration of cognitive tests, collection of eye-tracking and functional MRI data, and processing/analyzation of this data.

Amanda Rodriguez, MS

Graduate Researcher

Amanda is a doctoral student at the University of Georgia working under the direction of Dr. Jennifer McDowell.  She received her B.A. from Loyola University New Orleans in Biology and Psychology and her M.S. from the University of Louisiana Lafayette in Experimental Psychology.  Her research interests are the genetic and neurological underpinnings of disrupted cognition in psychosis, primarily using structural and functional MRI.

In the BSNIP2 project, Amanda performs phlebotomy and oversees MRI and eye tracking data collection at the University of Georgia. Amanda also performs data analysis of eye tracking data from all sites.

David Parker, BA

Graduate Researcher

David graduated from the University of Georgia in 2012 with a double major in Philosophy and Cognitive Science. He worked as a research assistant and then co-lab manager of the Clinical and Cognitive Neuroscience Lab from 2011-2013 until he become a Ph.D student under the advisement of Drs. Clementz and McDowell in the fall of 2013. He has three primary research interests: 1) Identifying distinct EEG biomarkers related to psychosis, 2) Studying how ongoing and pre-stimulus neural oscillations influence post-stimulus behavior, 3) The integration of multiple neuroimaging modalities and multivariate data analysis.

David collects EEG data, established the BSNIP2 EEG pre-processing pipelines to be consistent with BSNIP1, implemented and closely monitors EEG quality control, performs single task EEG analysis, works on integrating EEG tasks using multivariate methods, and he is involved in manuscript preparation for new EEG measures added to BSNIP2.

William Oliver, BS

Graduate Researcher

William completed a bachelors of science in Psychology at the University of Georgia in 2008. During his undergraduate studies he started his work in the UGA Clinical and Cognitive Neurosciences Laboratory (CCNL) under the supervision of Drs. Brett Clementz and Jennifer McDowell. He has been a member of the CCNL as an undergraduate and now as a graduate research assistant of Neuroscience PhD program at UGA. His areas of interest include visual, auditory, and emotional processing in those suffering from psychotic disorders. William’s imaging background includes EEG and MEG modalities, and applying spectral analysis techniques to the acquired electromagnetic signals.

His roles in BSNIP-2 included oversight of EEG data acquisition and quality control, as well as clinical assessment of individuals entered into the study through the Athens/Augusta project site.