ABC Lab

Principal Investigator

Vice Chair for Faculty Development and Education, Department of Neurology
Chief of Stroke and Neurocritical Care in the Department of Neurology
Professor of Neurology (Stroke and Neurocritical Care)

Faculty Profile

Core Team Members

My research expertise spans clinical epidemiology, population based science and neuropathology. Specifically, my work focuses on investigating the role of vascular pathologies in development and progression of brain aging; and the complexities of the heart-brain connection across human aging. I obtained my PhD from Leiden University Medical Center, Netherlands, which focused on exploring the role of subclinical cardiac biomarkers in development of cognitive impairment and functional decline in older adults. The findings of my research have been published in high impact international journals such as Circulation, Neurology and Stroke (see the full list of my publications here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=mahinrad). As a postdoctoral fellow in ABC Lab, I am expanding my line of research to a broader spectrum of aging, including young and middle-age adults, to explore early markers of cerebrovascular damage and their relation to clinical and brain MRI outcomes as part of the CARDIA study (see information about CARDIA cohort here: https://www.cardia.dopm.uab.edu/). I also collaborate with the department of Radiology to examine the role of midlife cerebrovascular hemodynamics through application of novel MR techniques such as 4D flow MRI. Contact

I am a behavioral neuroscientist who uses magnetic resonance imaging to study the brain as it relates to behavior. My research interest is in affective dysfunction across a wide variety of neurological and psychiatric populations. I obtained my PhD from the University of Melbourne, Australia which examined neuroanatomical correlates of emotional, social and personality changes following neurosurgery to the prefrontal cortex. My role in the ABC lab is to identify neuroimaging biomarkers of cardiovascular risk and functional decline in adults at midlife at risk for cardiovascular disease as part of the longitudinal CARDIA study. I am a NARSAD Young Investigator Award recipient, for which I am collecting multimodal MRI data with a Human Connectome Project protocol to predict relapse in individuals with major depressive and bipolar disorder. I am also involved in a project studying the impact of perinatal exposure to human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and antiretroviral therapy on structural brain changes in adolescents who did not acquire HIV. I have published studies using a lesion-deficit analysis, task-based functional MRI (fMRI), resting state functional connectivity, subcortical morphology and a transdiagnostic meta-analysis of white matter changes in emotional disorders. I enjoy multidisciplinary collaboration, and as of March 2020, I will be a Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences in the Feinberg School of Medicine. Contact

My name is Andrew, and I come from Knoxville, Tennessee. I attended the University of Tennessee for both my bachelor’s and master’s degrees in biomedical engineering. After graduating, I went to work for a non-profit named Remote Area Medical – a group dedicated to providing dental, medical, and vision care to underserved populations around the U.S. and some parts of the world. I moved to Chicago at the start of 2019 to start life in a big city, and I began to work in the cerebrovascular lab of Dr. Sorond in April.  I already find myself involved in several studies, and I look forward to continuing the work of this lab. Contact

My name is Meghana Shownkeen. I am a second-year medical student at the University of Illinois College of Medicine at Chicago. My passion for research stems from my undergraduate years at the University of Miami (FL). I graduated in May 2018 with a BS in Neuroscience. During this time, I was involved in data collection for several stroke clinical trials and endovascular neurology projects at the UM Miller School of Medicine. These early opportunities, as well as an independent research project during my senior year, cultivated my interest in neurology, with a specific focus on cerebrovascular disease. I was fortunate to join Dr. Sorond and the ABC lab in January 2019. As a student researcher, my primary role is to aid in data analysis, writing, and discussion. Within the past year, I have worked on a project investigating cardiovascular health through young adulthood and its relation to cognition and cerebral autoregulation in midlife. I am grateful for the incredible mentorship and collaboration in our lab and look forward to continue working on future projects. Contact

Originally from New Mexico, I transferred to the University of Nevada, Las Vegas to finish my bachelor’s degree in psychology. Shortly thereafter, I moved to Chicago in October 2015 to begin working with Dr. Sorond as a research assistant. When I first arrived at the lab we simply had boxes of equipment in an otherwise empty lab. Some may have seen a mountain of work, however, I saw an incredible opportunity to start from square one. After working unaccompanied for one year, I was thankful to have Cristina, an incredibly bright Neurology resident from Portugal, and later, Shawn, a rising young biomedical engineer, join me in the lab. Together, along with many others, we have been able to advance as a lab quite impressively. I was the Research Coordinator of the Cerebrovascular Lab, collaborating on multiple projects including the CARDIA MRI Ancillary study and the MS Brain Blood Flow study. I am now a vascular technologist in the  neurological testing center.

I am Cristina Duque, a final year neurology resident from Portugal. My passion for research started during medical school, participating in a research project studying cancer cell lines and mitosis as a part of a prestigious laboratory in the Institute of Health Innovation and Research in Porto. As my final master thesis in Porto Medical School, I studied carotid stenosis and cerebrovascular disease, developing a comprehensive insight that led me to my residency choice. As a neurology resident, I have started an MD/PhD career as a part of Coimbra University Hospital Center. Clinical research has been my core interest throughout my practice years, mainly developing observational studies and learning transcranial Doppler ultrasound techniques. Alongside the extensive clinical experience, I was able to use the available resources to establish research protocols, with a focal interest in cerebral white matter diseases. In this context, I successfully completed the joint two-year program between Harvard Medical School and Portugal Clinical Scholars Research Training. I started working in Dr. Sorond’s lab in October 2016, developing a research project addressing vascular mechanisms in Multiple Sclerosis. This constitutes my main focus in this lab and the basis for my PhD thesis. Concurrently I conduct data acquisition, processing and provide clinical input in all of our projects pertaining to cerebral hemodynamics and cerebrovascular small vessel disease. The opportunity of doing clinical research in Dr. Sorond’s lab has been one of the most rewarding ones in my career and I am looking forward to all of our future endeavors. 

My name is Shawn Kurian. I graduated from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and joined Dr. Sorond’s lab in May 2017. Born and raised in Chicago, I was eager to return to the city to work at Northwestern. My primary role in the lab is leading MRI analysis focusing on diffusion tensor imaging. In addition, I help with data processing, overseeing script implementation, and pooling resources with our neuroimaging and medical technology collaborators. I am now in medical school but hope to continue to work with Dr. Sorond and this lab in our future investigations.