Team - Pediatric Neuroimaging

Principal Investigator

Prof. Dr. med. Inga Katharina Koerte, M.D.
Dr. Koerte is holding a dual affiliation as Professor of Neurobiological Research in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU), Munich, Germany and as Lecturer in Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School (HMS), Boston, USA.

The overarching goal of Dr. Koerte’s research is to investigate the effects of brain trauma on the brain’s structure and function, as well as the development of diagnostic markers that can be used for the purpose of both therapeutic, and preventative interventions. Her research focuses on the most vulnerable traumatic brain injury (TBI) patient cohorts – children, adolescents, and women.
Dr. Koerte was the first to show alterations in the brain’s microstructure following repetitive subconcussive head impacts in young athletes without a history of concussion, as well as structural changes in ice hockey players over the course of a play season. Together with her team, she detected signs of accelerated aging and neuroinflammation associated with exposure to repetitive brain trauma, identified risk factors, and biomarkers for neurodegeneration after brain trauma. Dr. Koerte is the recipient of numerous awards and prizes. She is the principal investigator of a study elucidating the effects of sex in sports-related concussion funded by the National Institutes of Health (RO1 NINDS). She is the Coordinator of a European multi-site study on the effects of repetitive head impacts in youth athletes (REPIMPACT), and a Co-leader of an international, multi-center initiative on large-scale analyses of neuroimaging data in sports-related concussion and pediatric TBI (ENIGMA). Dr. Koerte is associate faculty of the Graduate School of Systemic Neuroscience in Munich, Germany.

In summary, Dr. Koerte has a record of accomplished and productive high-impact research projects in an area of high relevance to public health. Her research utilizes and further develops cutting-edge technology to address brain alterations following brain injury and aims to lead to a new understanding of brain processes following traumatic brain injury. This new understanding will, in turn, open up new horizons for early diagnosis, effective therapeutic approaches, and prevention of long-term sequelae, for which she is most committed.

Contact Inga: inga.koerte [at] med.uni-muenchen [dot] de

Inga's CV

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ResearchGate

Senior Administrative Assistant

Doris Bianco
Doris has been senior administrative assistant of the Directorate of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at LMU since 2013 and secretary at cBRAIN since February 2020. With her decades of experience, she supports cBRAIN in the planning and implementation of research studies.

Contact Doris: doris.bianco[at] med.uni-muenchen [dot] de

Research Coordinator

Carolina Piña H., M.Sc.
Carolina graduated from Universidad Nacional de Colombia with a degree in Psychology in 2015, moved to Germany in 2017 and received her master's degree in Health Science from Technical University of Munich. During her master's studies, Carolina worked for the Center for International Health (CIH-LMU) and joined cBRAIN in October 2020 as research coordinator.

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

Post-Docs & Visiting Scientists

Dr. Fanny Dégeilh, Ph.D., M.Sc.
Fanny earned a PhD in neuroscience at École Pratique des Hautes Études (Paris, France) in June 2016. From Fall 2016 to Spring 2019, she conducted post-doctoral research in the ABCs Lab (dir: Dr. Miriam Beauchamp) and Grandir Ensemble Lab (dir: Dr. Annie Bernier) at the University of Montreal (Canada). Since May 2019, she is part of cBRAIN as a post-doctoral research fellow. The aim of her research is at investigating, on the one hand, the influence of positive early social and relational factors on brain development, and on the other hand, the impact of paediatric traumatic brain injury on brain and behaviour. Fanny is investigator of NEUROPRECISE and Neu-Vasc, and principal investigator of EULE. She recently won a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowships grant (European Commission H2020) for her research on brain development following pediatric TBI.

Contact Fanny: Fanny.Degeilh [at] med.uni-muenchen [dot] de

Fanny's CV

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ResearchGate

PD Dr. med. Elisabeth Kaufmann, M.D.
Elisabeth is a medical resident 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 magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).

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

Elisabeth's CV

ResearchGate

Dr. med. David Kaufmann, M.D.
David graduated from medical school at LMU in 2013 and received his Ph.D. in 2014. Since 2009 his research focuses on neuroimaging of neurophysiologic processes. Since 2013, he is a medical resident in radiology at Klinische Radiologie at Charité Universitätsmedizin, Berlin. He is currently spending a postdoctoral fellowship at LMU and HMS with the focus on long- and short-term effects of sports related concussion in soccer and American football.

Contact David: david.kaufmann [at] med.uni-muenchen [dot] de

David's CV

ResearchGate

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, Technical University of Munich, in 2020. Vivian began to work with neuroimaging of repetitive head impacts during a one-year research fellowship at the Psychiatry Neuroimaging Laboratory, Harvard Medical School, 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

Vivian's CV

ResearchGate

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 [at] j.seitz [dot] de

Johanna's CV

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ResearchGate

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

Google Scholar

ResearchGate

Dissertation Candidates

Elena Bonke, M.Sc.
Elena is a doctoral student enrolled in the PhD-program of the Graduate School of Systemic Neurosciences (GSN). She graduated in Applied Neurosciences in Sports and Exercise from Paderborn University in 2019. Elena is mainly interested in the effects of repetitive head impacts and concussion on structural brain changes in the sports context.

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

Malo Gaubert, M.Sc., M.Sc.
Malo obtained a MSc in Engineering (speciality: computer science and imaging) in 2009 and a MSc in Biology (speciality: neuroscience) in 2011. After experiences in different labs across the world (France, Canada, Germany), Malo joined the cBRAIN lab as scientist researcher. His role is to implement neuroimaging tools in the lab and to guide the different members through their imaging analyses. His interests are mainly to understand the brain structures and functions related to cognition and brain disorders by the application of cutting-edge tools in anatomical and functional imaging.

Contact Malo: malo.gaubert [at] med.uni-muenchen [dot] de

Felicitas Heinen, B.Sc.
Felicitas received her bachelor's degree from Fairfield University, Connecticut, USA in 2015, majoring in Biology and minoring in Psychology. She is currently a medical student at LMU and joined cBRAIN as a doctorate student in 2017. Felicitas investigates the effects of playing soccer on the brain’s structure using neuroimaging of youth soccer players.

Contact Felicitas: felicitas.heinen [at] med.uni-muenchen [dot] de

Jakob Hufschmidt, M.D.
Jakob is a medical student at Albert-Ludwigs University, Freiburg and doctoral candidate at the LMU. He joined the team in 2014 and spent one year at the Psychiatry Neuroimaging Laboratory (PNL), Boston, to study the consequences of repetitive mild traumatic brain injury by means of diffusion tensor and structural MRI. His research interest lie in mild traumatic brain injury and the development of imaging approaches to adequately depict its pathologic aftermath.

Contact Jakob: j.f.d.hufschmidt [at] web [dot] de

Leonard Jung
Leo is a medical student at LMU and a doctorate student at cBRAIN. Interested in the psychiatric impact of contact sports, he focusses on the effects of mTBI in athletes. Currently, Leo is involved in the data collection of young soccer players in Munich. In July 2021 he will be spending a research traineeship at PNL, HMS, participating in the DIAGNOSE-CTE research project. For his stay in Boston Leo has received the LMU- international medical research scholarship (iFo MeCuM).

Contact Leo: leonard.jung.extern [at] med.uni-muenchen [dot] de

Cara Lynn Kim
Cara is a medical student at the Technical University of Munich and joined cBRAIN as a doctorate student in 2019. Her main interest lies in the field of traumatic brain injuries and the long-term consequences of repetitive head impacts in athletes. Cara is holding scholarships from the German Academic Scholarship Foundation and the Friedrich-Naumann Foundation for Freedom.

Contact Cara: cara.kim [at] med.uni-muenchen [dot] de

Philipp Kinzel, M.D.
Philipp is a medical student at LMU and a doctorate student at cBRAIN. He is currently spending a research year at HMS to identify diffusion tensor imaging markers for traumatic brain injury and post traumatic stress disorder. His main interest lies in studying the association between neurosteroid hormones and brain structure in relation to clinical outcome.

Contact Philipp: pkinzel [at] bwh.harvard [dot] edu

Janna Kochsiek
Janna is a medical student at LMU and doctorate student at cBRAIN. Being interested in sports-related mild traumatic brain injury she joined the team in October 2017. Janna analyzes diffusion imaging in former professional American football players at HMS in Boston and is involved in the data collection of young soccer players in Munich. For her stay at HMS, Janna received scholarships by the LMU PROSA program and the FAZIT-Stiftung.

Contact Janna: janna.kochsiek [at] med.uni-muenchen [dot] de

Lorenzo Nigris, M.D.
Lorenzo graduated from Università degli Studi di Udine (Italy) with a degree in Medicine in 2020. He took part in a one year Erasmus+ programme at the University of Ljubljana (Slovenia) in 2018, where he completed his thesis based on a fMRI study. Aiming to deepen his interests in brain sciences and neuroimaging, Lorenzo joined cBRAIN as a PhD student in the MMRS LMU Klinikum Program in March 2021. His focus is the study of pediatric mTBI by using different MRI sequences in the project Neu-Vasc.

Contact Lorenzo: lorenzo.nigris [at] med.uni-munchen [dot] de

Lara Pankatz
Lara is a medical student at LMU. Funded by LMU's FöFoLe program she joined cBRAIN as a doctorate student in 2020. Her main interest lies in sex differences underlying brain structural changes after sport-related brain injury. Also, she will be involved in analyzing diffusion tensor imaging in mild traumatic brain injury in young soccer players in Munich. She is looking forward to spending a research semester at PNL, HMS in 2021.

Contact Lara: lara.pankatz [at] med.uni-muenchen [dot] de

Paul Raffelhüschen
Paul is a medical student at TU Munich and joined the team in 2019 as doctorate student. His interests lie in the assessment of advanced imaging techniques for clinical application and the long term effects of TBI on the human brain. He is therefore working on data of sports related brain injuries and sex differences in TBI rehabilitation and is spending a semester at PNL, HMS.

Contact Paul: paul.raffelhueschen.extern [at] med.uni-muenchen [dot] de

Philine Rojczyk, M.Sc.
Philine graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in psychology from Leiden University, The Netherlands and moved to Germany in 2016 where she is a clinical psychology Master’s student at Medical School Hamburg. Philine is interested in brain structural changes during brain development. Following her Master’s she will be spending a 1 year research traineeship at HMS.

Contact Philine: philine.rojczyk [at] med.uni-muenchen [dot] de

Bettina Schwarz-Moertel, M.D.
Bettina graduated from LMU with an MD in 2007. She has since focused on emergency medicine with training in general surgery, anesthesiology and emergency medicine at the University Hospital of Munich Großhadern and Heidelberg. She joined cBRAIN in 2018 to investigate the clinical relevance and applicability of neuroimaging markers to predict outcome following traumatic brain injury.

Contact Bettina: bettina.moertl [at] gmail [dot] com

Kosisochukwu E. Umeasalugo, M.Sc., B.Sc.
Kosisochukwu is a doctoral student enrolled in the Graduate School of Systemic Neurosciences (GSN). He obtained a B.Sc. in Human Anatomy in 2012 and an M.Sc. in Neurosciences in 2019. He joined cBRAIN in 2020 owing to his interest in mild TBI and neuroimaging. Kosisochukwu investigates the therapeutic potential of neurosteroids after mild TBI with respect to age and sex.

Contact Kosisochukwu: kosisochukwu.umeasalugo[at] med.uni-muenchen [dot] de

Lisa Umminger, B.Sc.
Lisa graduated from LMU with a degree in psychology in 2014. She is currently a medical student and doctorate student at LMU. By focusing on psychopathology/clinical neuropsychology, she developed her interest in neurobiological correlates of psychiatric diseases. Her research focuses on the the interaction of traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress disorder. Lisa is stipend of the Rolf W. Günther Stiftung for radiological research.

Contact Lisa: lisa.umminger [at] med.uni-muenchen [dot] de

Tim Wiegand
Tim is a medical student at LMU and a medical PhD student at cBRAIN. He focusses on advanced neuroimaging techniques for the study of effects of repetitive head impacts in soccer players as well as Americal football players. In addition, he is interested in AI-driven research methods in neuroscience. After spending a summer internship at the PNL in 2017, he has returned as a research trainee to the PNL in March 2021. Tim is holding scholarships of LMU and the Konrad Adenauer Foundation.

Contact Tim: tim.wiegand [at] med.uni-muenchen [dot] de

Anna Willems, M.D.
Anna is a medical student at Albert-Ludwigs-University in Freiburg, Germany since October 2011 (class of 2019). Since April 2014 she is a medical doctorate student at LMU. As part of her doctoral thesis, Anna spent one year at the HMS to study the brain's microstructure in children with dyslexia using advanced MRI techniques. Currently, her research focuses on learning disorders and brain development. Anna is holding a Cusanuswerk scholarship.

Contact Anna: annachristina.willems [at] med.uni-muenchen [dot] de

Paweł Wrobel, M.D.
Paweł is a medical student at LMU and a medical doctorate student at cBRAIN. As part of his dissertation, he spent one year at HMS. His research focus is on brain developmental and neurodegenerative processes following traumatic brain injury. He is using macroscopic volumetric MRI evaluation and diffusion tensor imaging. Paweł has a passion for education and was admitted to the LMU Student Excellence Program where he participates in development of new courses for healthcare professions.

Contact Paweł: pawrobel [at] gmx [dot] de

Research Interns & Research Assistants

Alexandra Castro Silva
Alexandra is a medical student at LMU and a research assistant at cBRAIN. She joined cBRAIN in July 2020 as part of the LMU’s research module. Her interests lie in the consequences of repetitive head impacts in the brain structure in children and adolescent and neuroimaging.

Contact Alexandra: s-acastros [at] helios.med.uni-muenchen [dot] de

Sarah Kübler
Sarah is a medical student at TU Munich. She joined cBRAIN in February 2021 as a research assistant. Her main interests lie in sports-related mild traumatic brain injuries and their effects on brain development in young athletes. Within cBRAIN, she is involved in the data acquisition for the NEUROPRECISE study and the neuropsychological testing of young athletes after mTBI. Sarah is holding a scholarship of the German Academic Scholarship Foundation.

Contact Sarah: sarah.kuebler [at] med.uni-muenchen [dot] de

Paula Schorlemer
Paula is a medical student at LMU. She joined cBRAIN in July 2019 for a research module initiated by LMU’s medical support programme. Her interests lie in the effects of repetitive head impacts on brain alterations in adolescent and the clinical consequences.

Contact Paula: paula.schorlemer [at] med.uni-muenchen [dot] de

Luisa Schuhmacher
Luisa is a medical student at LMU. She joined cBRAIN in December 2020 as a research assistant. Her interests lie in the neurodevelopmental trajectories of children and adolescents, and the effects of mTBI on their development. In cBRAIN, she is responsible for conducting the MRI exams for the studies EULE, Neu-Vasc and NEUROPRECISE.

Contact Luisa: luisa.schuhmacher03 [at] gmail [dot] com

cBRAIN Alumni

Silke Schenker, B.Sc.
Silke joined cBRAIN in 2019 and 2020 as a project coordinator.