Boston Personnel

Joanne D. Wojcik, PhD, APRN, BC

Dr. Wojcik is a licensed, board certified, advanced practice psychiatric nurse with over 35 years of experience in clinical research involving psychotic and affective disorders. She is the Associate Director of the Commonwealth Research Center, which supports neuroscience research on the biological basis of serious mental illness. Research studies have included many clinical drug trials and NIMH grants with a focus on understanding the biological basis of affective and psychotic disorders and those at risk for developing a psychotic disorder.

She is responsible for clinical and diagnostic assessment, research administration and study management. She provides supervision and training in the use of a wide variety of research instruments, diagnostic assessment tools and in study management. 

Laura von Hardenberg, MPhil

Laura graduated from Newcastle University in 2013 with a Bachelor of Arts, majoring in Psychology. She then did her Master of Philosophy at the University of Cambridge in 2014 in Psychology & Education. During her undergraduate experience she volunteered at the “Stroke Association”, helping elderly people who suffered from a stroke to relearn how to read, write and speak again.

She also volunteered in the Laboratory of Autism at the University of Cambridge, where she worked with autistic children and teenagers. She is the BSNIP 2 research coordinator. Her responsibilities on the BSNIP 2 project include recruiting and scheduling participants, conducting clinical and neuropsychological assessments, and doing DNA sample collection

Roscoe Brady MD, PhD

Dr. Brady is the director of psychopharmacology education at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and is co-director of the research track of the Harvard Longwood Psychiatry Residency Training Program. Dr. Brady is board certified psychiatrist with a scientific background in molecular biology and in neuroimaging.
Dr. Brady’s current research is focused on understanding the pathophysiology of bipolar disorder with a specific interest in the biology of switching between different mood states.

He currently employs functional magnetic resonance imaging as well as magnetic resonance spectroscopy to examine how brain chemistry and brain network activity change between mood states in bipolar disorder. His recent work has illuminated how the neural circuits of emotion regulation change between the bipolar states of mania and euthymia. These results provide insight into a circuit based mechanism for the emotional lability observed in bipolar mania.

Nicolas R. Bolo, Ph.D.

Dr. Bolo is the director of neuroimaging in psychiatry at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and assistant professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. Trained in biophysics, Dr. Bolo has over two decades of clinical research experience using high-field magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and spectroscopy (MRS) aimed at advancing our understanding of the biological basis of neuropsychiatric disorders.

Dr. Bolo’s research focuses on finding neuroimaging biomarkers of mood, cognitive and psychotic disorders, and investigating the effects of metabolic disorders on brain metabolism, function and plasticity.

In the BSNIP-2 project, Dr. Bolo coordinates the core MRI protocols – structural, resting-state functional, diffusion tensor imaging (DTI), and arterial spin labeling (ASL) – performed at the multiple sites with diverse 3T scanner configurations (GE Signa and 750, Philips Achieva and Siemens Skyra), to insure homogeneous data acquisition and optimized data quality among BSNIP-2 sites.

Dr. Mei Hall

Dr. Hall is the Director of the Psychosis Neurobiology Laboratory at McLean Hospital and Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Hall’s lab specializes in theneurophysiological EEG measures to characterize brain dysfunction in major psychotic disorders and to dissect genetic and environmental contributions of brain neurophysiological deficits.

Dr. Hall’s research is supported by NIMH grants. Her current research involves in 1) using neurophysiological and neurochemistry approaches jointly to characterize glutamate dysfunction in schizophrenia that can potentially serve as a biomarker, 2) using an objective multivariate classification analysis to uncover latent psychiatric subgroups in patients with psychotic spectrum disorders, and 3) predicting functional outcome of psychotic patients on the basis of individuals’ neurobiological brain signatures.

Corin Pilo-Comtois, LMHC

Corin Pilo-Comtois, LMHC is the Director of Patient Recruitment for the Commonwealth Research Center at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. She provides outreach to the community on recognizing early risk for psychosis and other current research project highlights. She supervises recruitment activity for all Commonwealth Research Center and Psychosis Research Program studies. She is also credentialed at Boston Children’s Hospital and McLean Hospital and meets with clinicians, patients and families interested in our research at those sites as well.

Corin is the primary contact for all research participation questions, concerns and eligibility screenings.

Kiran Singh, MD

Kiran graduated from Katihar Medical College and Hospital with a MBBS (Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery) degree. She worked as Primary Care Physician in India. After moving to the US, she volunteered in Geriatrics Psychiatry in St. Elizabeth and Norwood Caritas Hospitals. She was an Editorial writer at WikiDoc and worked on Psychiatry projects.

As a member of B-SNIP2 project, her responsibilities include recruiting participants, conducting clinical and neuropsychological assessments, serving as secondary operator for MRI, EEG, and eye tracking, and DNA sample collection.

Raquelle I. Mesholam-Gately, Ph.D.

Dr. Mesholam-Gately is the Chief Neuropsychologist/Director of Neuropsychology Research for the Commonwealth Research Center at the Massachusetts Mental Health Center Division of Public Psychiatry in the Department of Psychiatry at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and an Instructor in Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School.

Dr. Mesholam-Gately’s research pursuits have focused on the link between olfaction and the brain’s reward system in schizophrenia, neurocognitive functioning throughout the course of schizophrenia (including the at-risk stage), and the improvement of current cognitive remediation efforts in schizophrenia, including the study of novel methods and the use of reward-enhancing strategies. She also leads a consumer-based participatory mental health study examining consumer-clinician relationships in mental health.

Larry J. Seidman, Ph.D

Professor of Psychology, HMS and Vice Chair (Research) of Public Psychiatry, BIDMC and MMHC. He is Director of the Commonwealth Research Center, a research “Center of Excellence in Clinical Neuroscience and Psychopharmacological Research” funded by the Massachusetts Department of Mental Health. 

He is a licensed psychologist, and his clinical specialization is in psychotherapy and neuropsychological assessment of teenagers and young adults (ages 14-30), particularly those with schizophrenia and psychotic spectrum disorders and attention deficit disorders. His research activities include identifying childhood risk factors for psychosis, early intervention for psychotic disorders, and cognitive enhancement of neurocognitive deficits in psychotic disorders as well as in persons at risk for psychosis.

Matcheri Keshavan, M.D.

Dr. Keshavan is Stanley Cobb Professor of Psychiatry at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center; Harvard Medical School (HMS). He is also Vice-Chair for the department’s Public Psychiatry division, and a senior psychiatric advisor for the Massachusetts Mental Health Center. Dr. Keshavan received his medical training in Mysore, India (where he graduated at the top of his University), and his psychiatric training in Bangalore (India), Vienna, London, and Detroit.

Dr. Keshavan’s research is closely involved in understanding the biological basis of mental illnesses like schizophrenia and in early intervention using medical and psychosocial approaches. . His research has resulted in over 600 publications and 4 books. Dr. Keshavan is also an avid sketcher (mostly pen and pencil),.

Brandon Hager, MA

Brandon graduated from Columbia University in 2010 with a Master of Arts degree in Developmental Psychology. Prior to joining the IMPACT laboratory, Brandon spent a year as an adolescent therapist for Pembroke psychiatric hospital. Brandon has been a member of the impact laboratory for the past 4 years.

His primary research interest is utilizing neuroimaging to identify biomarkers for psychotic disorders. His responsibilities on the B-SNIP2 project include the management of the neurophysiology lab, imaging/data analysis, neuropsychological assessments, and DNA sample collection.

Suraj Sarvode Mothi, MPH

Suraj graduated with an MPH in Biostatistics from the Boston University School of Public Health. He is a Biostatistician and data manager in the department of Psychiatry at the OCD and related disorders program, Massachusetts general Hospital, where he works on modeling and analysis of data in clinical trials of behavior therapy, TMS and neural mechanisms of OC spectrum disorders.

He also works as a data analyst in the Neuroimaging lab at the department of psychiatry, Beth Israel deaconess medical centre. His research focus is on structural neuroimaging studies with a focus on how anatomy changes through development, in illness and how these variations relate to cognitive function.

Neeraj Tandon

Neeraj gravitated toward medicine after finishing his undergraduate degree in Computer and Electrical Engineering. His research interests include neuroimaging, genetics, early intervention and stratified medicine in psychiatric disorders. His responsibilities on the B-SNIP2 project include computation, image processing and statistical analysis.