Personnel

Dominique Duncan, PhD

 Dominique.Duncan@pennmedicine.upenn.edu

Dr. Dominique Duncan is affiliated with the Departments of Neurology, Bioengineering, and Neurosurgery at the University of Pennsylvania as well as the Department of Biomedical Engineering and the Information Sciences Institute at the University of Southern California. Dr. Duncan’s background spans mathematics, engineering, and neuroscience. She double majored in Mathematics and Polish Literature as an undergraduate at the University of Chicago and minored in Computational Neuroscience. She earned her Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering at Yale University. In her Ph.D. thesis, she analyzed intracranial EEG data using nonlinear factor analysis to identify preseizure states of epilepsy patients. After receiving her Ph.D., she was a professor of Mathematics at Sichuan University in Chengdu, China, for a summer program for undergraduate students. She then took a postdoctoral position in Neurology at the Stanford University School of Medicine, followed by a postdoctoral position in Mathematics at UC Davis, where she developed an algorithm based on diffusion maps to classify Alzheimer’s patients using MRI. She has built international, multidisciplinary collaborations and developed novel analytic tools to analyze multimodal data, including imaging and electrophysiology. Her interests lie at the intersection of data analysis, signal processing, and machine learning, particularly in the areas of traumatic brain injury, epilepsy, and, more recently, COVID-19. By creating large-scale data repositories and linking them with visualization and analytic tools for both neuroimaging and electrophysiology data, as well as multimodal data of COVID-19 patients, she aims to encourage collaboration across multiple fields. Dr. Duncan also uses virtual reality to optimize the process of analyzing neuroimaging data and to improve neuroscience education among K-12 students.

Kseniia Kriukova, MD/PhD

Kseniia Kriukova is a medical doctor and neurologist who graduated in 2018 from Sechenov University (summa cum laude); she finished her neurology residency in 2020 in a hospital where years ago used to practice the famous neuroscientist Dr. Luria. As a medical doctor, she started working with COVID-19 patients after the pandemic began. In 2021, she started working as an attending neurologist at the Sechenov University Cardiosurgical Hospital and, shortly after, worked as an attending neurologist at the Burdenko Neurosurgery Institute. As an attending neurologist at the Burdenko Neurosurgery Institute, Dr. Kriukova mainly focused on managing patients with severe traumatic brain injuries and their complications. Since she first entered medical school, Dr. Kriukova has been intensely involved in multiple scientific projects. From 2014 to 2016, she worked with glioma cell cultures under Dr. Chumakov. In 2015, she started her research focused on patients with severe traumatic brain injuries under Dr. Alexandrova’s supervision. In 2016, Dr. Kriukova received a scholarship to attend UCLA as a visiting graduate researcher. She spent a year working on epileptogenesis research under Dr. Engel’s and Dr. Bragin’s supervision. In 2022, Kseniia received another scholarship to go to UCLA and spent five months working on epileptogenesis research under Dr. Engel’s and Dr. Bragin’s supervision. Kseniia was awarded her Ph.D. on post-traumatic epilepsy in 2024. 

Tuba Asifriyaz, MS

Tuba received her B.A. in Neuroscience and Psychology and her Master of Science in Neuroimaging and Informatics (NIIN) from USC. Tuba joined Dr. Duncan’s lab as a Project Assistant on the EpiBioS4Rx project shortly after completing the NIIN program. She aims to utilize her previous academic and research experience with multimodal data to find potential biomarkers for epileptogenesis following traumatic brain injury (TBI). Tuba is also interested in studying the interaction between environmental and genetic risk factors in substance use disorder (SUD) and changes in the structural and functional connectivity of the brain. Tuba hopes to continue using multimodal neuroimaging techniques and analytical tools to find therapeutic interventions for post-traumatic epileptogenesis; she would also like to apply these methods to further explore the underlying neural mechanisms of motivated behavior.

Misque Boswell, MS

Misque’s background lies in physical anthropology, evolutionary medicine, and behavioral sciences; more recently, she received a Master’s degree from USC Keck School of Medicine in Neuroimaging and Informatics. Misque joined Dr. Duncan’s team as a Project Specialist and is working on DABI and BRAIN^2 projects, focusing on neuroelectrophysiology and MR imaging, utilizing her previous medical experience to produce analysis tools more pertinent in clinical applications. She is also interested in precision medicine and finding viable solutions that include the use of imaging and electrophysiology data in the diagnostic process to personalize treatment protocols in neuropsychiatric disorders.

Samantha Cohen

Sam joined the lab at the University of Southern California in 2021 after graduating from Cornell University with a BS in biomedical engineering. She is interested in understanding and improving therapeutics for motor disorders through electrical activity and neurostimulation. Her research focuses on understanding the anatomical contributions to abnormal electrophysiological activity in Parkinson’s disease, and how their interaction impacts symptom severity. Outside of the lab, you can find her cooking from her garden, taking photos, and working on her beach volleyball game.

Marianna La Rocca, PhD

Marianna received her doctorate in Physics Applied to Neuroscience from Bari University, Italy. Her research involves the use of multimodal neuroimaging techniques and computational methods to study neurodegenerative diseases and neurological conditions such as Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s disease. She was a Postdoctoral Scholar – Research Associate in the Laboratory of Neuro Imaging from 2018-2021, when she moved back to Bari University to join the Physics Department Faculty. Her research focuses on developing and applying complex network-based quantitative methods and machine-learning techniques to electrophysiology and imaging data to identify validated biomarkers of epileptogenesis after traumatic brain injury. She is also working on a project aimed at developing a platform that stores and disseminates multimodal and longitudinal data related to COVID-19 and provides various statistical and analytic tools for researchers.