Visiting Scientists


Carolina Silberbauer

Carolina Silberbauer has been working as a project assistant and study nurse in the Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at LMU since 2009. She collaborates across various research groups, coordinates the study nurses team, and is responsible for organizational tasks as well as public relations work.

As a certified mindfulness trainer (Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction), she led weekly mindfulness and meditation sessions for the cBRAIN team. Additionally, she is responsible for the mindfulness training of children, adolescents, and adults involved in the mindfulness-based fMRI neurofeedback study (mbNF).

Contact Carolina: carolina.silberbauer[at]med.uni-muenchen [dot] de



Dr. med. Annika Cecil Bertram, M.D., B.Sc.

Annika earned her B.Sc. in Business Administration from Otto-Friedrich-University Bamberg in 2014. In 2020, she successfully graduated from medical school at Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg. She has a keen interest in psychiatry and the potential to visualize psychopathologies through imaging techniques. In 2021, while working as a resident physician in neuroradiology at the University Hospital Heidelberg, she gained expertise in neuroimaging. Her doctoral thesis focused on imaging techniques in maxillofacial surgery and was successfully defended in 2022.
In the same year, Annika transitioned to Ludwig-Maximilian University Munich, aiming to expand her knowledge of mental disorders in childhood and adolescence. As an experienced resident physician in child and adolescent psychiatry, she joined cBRAIN in 2023. Her research revolves around integrating neuroimaging techniques and neuropsychology in the study of brain development.

Contact Annika: annika.bertram[at]med.uni-muenchen [dot] de



Elena Bonke, Ph.D.

Elena is a visiting scientist at cBRAIN since 2023 after completing her Ph.D. at cBRAIN and the Graduate School of Systemic Neurosciences (GSN). In 2020, she additionally joined the Psychiatry Neuroimaging Laboratory at Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA as a research trainee. Her main interests are applying multimodal neuroimaging techniques to study both brain development in the healthy brain in association with motor development, as well as brain development in the injured brain after (sport-related) concussion.

Contact Elena: elena.bonke [at] med.uni-muenchen [dot] de



Julie Joyce, M.Sc.

Julie holds a Master’s degree in medical science with a specialization in medical imaging and a Bachelor’s degree in neuroscience from the University of Calgary. She joined cBRAIN in 2022 to investigate the effects of traumatic brain injury and repetitive head impacts on brain metabolism. In 2023, she additionally joined the Center for Clinical Spectroscopy at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.​

Contact Julie: julie.joyce [at] med.uni-muenchen [dot] de



PD Dr. med. Elisabeth Kaufmann, M.D.
Elisabeth is an attending physician in Neurology at LMU. She graduated from LMU in 2012 and received her dissertation in 2013. Her research interests include stimulation therapies and neuroimaging in epilepsy, narcolepsy as well as traumatic brain injury. Supported by cBRAIN, she spent a postdoctoral fellowships at HMS to expand her knowledge about advanced analysis techniques for structural and functional MRI.

Contact Elisabeth: elisabeth.kaufmann[at] med.uni-muenchen [dot] de


Dr. med. Vivian Schultz, M.D.
Vivian graduated from medical school at University of Freiburg in December 2019. She started her residency at the Department of Interventional and Diagnostic Neuroradiology at Klinikum rechts der Isar, TUM, in 2020. Vivian began to work with neuroimaging of repetitive head impacts during a one-year research fellowship at the PNL at HMS in 2016/2017. Now, her primary research focus lies on utilizing advanced neuroimaging techniques to explore long- and short-term effects of sports-related concussion and subconcussive head impacts.

Contact Vivian: vivian.schultz [at] med.uni-muenchen [dot] de


Dr. med. Johanna Seitz-Holland, M.D., B.Sc.
Johanna received her B.Sc. in psychology from Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München in 2012. In 2019 she finished medical school at the Technische Universität München. While achieving her clinical degree, Johanna primarily focused on psychiatry, psychosomatic, and psychotherapy. Starting in 2014, she wrote her doctoral thesis at cBRAIN using diffusion tensor imaging techniques to understand early course schizophrenia and graduated in January 2020. Johanna is currently working as a postdoctoral research fellow at the Psychiatry Neuroimaging Laboratory, Harvard Medical School, in Boston. Her research's primary focus is to utilize advanced neuroimaging techniques and statistical modeling to understand the structure of the human brain and its role in psychiatric symptoms (especially psychosis). Specifically, she is interested in the interaction of brain structure and physical health and the effect of sex on this interaction.

Contact Johanna: johanna.seitz [at] med.uni-muenchen [dot] de


PD Dr. med. Nico Sollmann, M.D., Ph.D., B.A.
Nico graduated from medical school at TUM in 2013. He completed the Ph.D. program “Medical Life Science and Technology” at TUM in 2017, followed by residency at the Department of Diagnostic and Interventional Neuroradiology at Klinikum rechts der Isar from 2017 to 2020. He now works as a resident at the Department of Diagnostic and Interventional Radiology at University Hospital Ulm, holding simultaneous positions as a visiting scientist at the Department of Diagnostic and Interventional Neuroradiology at Klinikum rechts der Isar and cBRAIN. His main research interests include brain stimulation by navigated TMS and its combination with advanced imaging techniques, imaging in mild traumatic brain injury, and imaging in osteoporosis and degenerative spine diseases (including magnetic resonance neurography and chemical shift encoding-based water-fat MRI). He started to work with diffusion tensor imaging in mild traumatic brain injury during a fellowship at PNL, HMS in 2016.

Contact Nico: nico.sollmann[at] med.uni-muenchen [dot] de