David is driven by computational approaches and technology that can help to improve treatment for psychiatric and neurological patients. Before moving to Aachen in 2021, he has completed a Dr. med. dissertation project on robot-assisted motor learning at University College London and a Ph.D. in clinical applications of Brain-Computer-Interfaces (fMRI Neurofeedback training) at Cardiff University. He then returned to Germany to complete post-doctoral training in machine learning for large scale, longitudinal psychiatric brain imaging and earn a degree in medicine at the University of Münster. David is also interested in health tech startups and has been co-founder of a neuro tech consultancy. When he is not in the lab, he is probably networking. You may also catch him on Twitter @neuroccino.
Murat is a neuroscientist with an electronics and biomedical engineering background. Before starting in the ACN Lab, he has completed postdoctoral training at the Cognitive Biology Department in OVGU, Magdeburg, where he has worked on multistable perception with fMRI and EEG-based global brain dynamics. During his PhD, he has investigated bilingual language processing at word and sentence level with fNIRS at Boğaziçi University, İstanbul. Murat is mainly interested in analyzing brain signals from different neuroimaging modalities and in topics of neurolinguistics. He is also a translator and loves to find treasures in flea markets. You can find him on Bluesky for science posts and on X for everything else.
Franziska has a background in math and physics as well as neurocognitive psychology. Her research focus lies in the development and use of fNIRS-based real-time applications such as neurofeedback and BCIs as well as in advancing and validating (real-time) signal processing techniques. She completed her Ph.D. at the University of Oldenburg, where she conducted the first fNIRS neurofeedback trial in Parkinson's disease. Franziska is currently also working in the Neurocognition and functional Neurorehabilitation group at the University of Oldenburg. Besides science and data, she likes playing with graphics. You can also find her on X .
Joscha graduated in biotechnology from RWTH Aachen University in 2021. In his final theses, he investigated activities of neuron networks under different cultivation conditions. He is looking forward to extend his knowledge from the level of single cells and small cell networks further into the fields of neurology and psychiatry and to contribute to the investigation and establishment of fNIRs. Joscha supports the group as a research assistant and is currently studying a second time to later teach chemistry and biology in schools.
Hanbing studied computer science and biomedical engineering at the Dalian University of Technology in China. For her master's thesis, she applied the transfer learning method with EEG signals to improve mental fatigue detection performance across subjects. She is now pursuing her Ph.D. in Aachen, interested in applying deep transfer learning methods to help clinical disease diagnosis. If she sends some weird meaningless messages to you, her cat is the one to blame (who is cute enough that you will always forgive).
Xuelei majored in computer science and mainly focused on machine natural language processing at the Dalian University of Technology in China. He is interested in how to use deep language models (like GPT-2, BERT) to explore the natural language processing mechanism of the human brain.
Yong-an studied clinical medicine at Dalian Medical University in China. For his master's thesis, he investigated the effects and predictors of endovascular treatment for patients with large artery atherosclerosis (LAA) and those with cardioembolic (CE) acute ischemic stroke with large vessel occlusion. He has completed residency training in neurology and worked as a neurologist before coming to Aachen. For his Ph.D. he will look at the impact of fNIRS neurofeedback training for motor rehabilitation in Parkinson’s disease.
Marianna is a Mathematics graduate from the University of Athens, Greece, with master’s degree in Data Science from RWTH Aachen and a keen interest in Neuroscience. Her previous work included sMRI and MRI data analysis and behavioral Neuroscience. During her master thesis she analysed intracellular recordings invastigating saccade-related activity and inter-area communication along the dorsal visual pathway at Forschungzentrum Jülich. Her PhD project is on emotional regulation using fNIRS Neurofeedback under the supervision of Dr. David Mehler. Additionally, she collaborates with Dr. Natalya Chechko on analyzing data related to post-partum depression. Besides data, she likes traveling and new brain hacks.
