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Lab Director
Daphne J. Holt, MD, PhD received her MD and PhD from the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine. She then went on to complete her clinical training at the MGH/McLean Psychiatry Residency Program and a fellowship in clinical research and neuroimaging at the MGH Department of Psychiatry and the Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging. She has been a faculty member of the MGH Psychiatry Department since 2004, and is an Associate Professor at Harvard Medical School. In addition to overseeing her lab, she also serves as the Co-Director of the MGH Psychosis Clinical and Research Program (PCRP) and the Director of the Resilience and Prevention Program (RAPP), a research program focused on developing and testing interventions to increase the resilience of youth with risk factors for developing psychiatric illnesses.
Email | Biosketch
Post-Doctoral Fellows
Taryn Berman, PhD received her doctorate in Cognitive Neuroscience from McGill University. Her PhD research focused on the neural mechanisms of decision-making for present and future pain. She is now examining the factors that impact personal space in first degree relatives of those with psychosis.
Clinical Research Coordinators
Daniel S. Johnson, BS received his degree in Psychology from Northeastern University with minors in Behavioral Neuroscience and Theatre in 2020. As part of his degree, Daniel completed a co-op in the CARE lab at McLean Hospital where he studied urgency, cognitive bias, and anhedonia. His current work at MGH focuses on studying the mechanisms underlying loneliness, social isolation, and personal space size in those with psychotic disorders.
Francesca de Marneffe, BS received her degrees in Clinical Psychology and Sociology from Tufts University in 2022. As an undergraduate, Francesca worked in a social psychology lab investigating how persuasion techniques can be used to incentivize interracial dialogue and reduce implicit bias. After graduating, she worked as a psychology assistant in a non-profit clinic in Madrid for people with schizophrenia spectrum disorders. Her primary research interests are the social and environmental factors that contribute to the development of psychosis. At MGH, Francesca is coordinating an NIH-funded study exploring the neurobiological, psychological, and social correlates of loneliness and social isolation in healthy controls and individuals with psychotic disorders.
Mitchell Chan, BS received his degree in Psychology from the University of California, Berkeley in 2023. Prior to joining the ESN lab, Mitchell focused on research topics related to language acquisition in both non-autistic and autistic populations, concept formation, and the effects of overconfidence on behavior. In the future, he is interested in combining his prior work with that of the ESN lab’s to study the formation of overconfident worldviews that may promote social isolation and how social isolation can increase risk for developing serious mental illnesses.
Emma Mirhashemi, BS received her degree in Psychology from the University of Washington with a minor in Law, Societies, and Justice in 2023. During her undergraduate career, Emma completed her honors thesis in the Genetic Risk and Neurodevelopment Lab, investigating neural mechanisms underlying cognitive dysfunction in individuals with schizophrenia. At MGH, she is coordinating an NIH-funded study exploring the impacts of an evidence-based behavioral intervention among college students at risk for serious mental illness.
Sophia Chung, BS received her degree in Biology and Community Health with a minor in Urban Studies from Tufts University in 2025. Prior to joining the ESN lab, Sophia conducted research on topics such as hippocampal protein translation rates in Fragile X syndrome, marital status and suicide rates in Taiwan, and media representation of developmental disability. Her current work at MGH focuses on studying a resilience training intervention for college students and the mechanisms underlying personal space size in those with psychotic disorders. In the future, she is interested in combining her interests in public mental health and medicine through research and clinical work.
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Suhani Dheer, BS received her Bachelor of Science degree in Psychology with a minor in Neuroscience from Drexel University in 2025. During her undergraduate years, she conducted research at Drexel University and the University of Pennsylvania, working with a variety of modalities including MRI and virtual reality simulators. She has experience working with diverse clinical populations, including individuals with psychosis, eating disorders, and traumatic brain injury. Currently, Suhani is coordinating an NIH-funded study investigating how social isolation and loneliness contribute to poor psychological and physical health in healthy controls as well as individuals with psychotic disorders.
Senior Program Manager
Leah B. Namey, MPH earned her master's in public health from Boston University's School of Public Health. She is the Sr. Program and Research Manager for the MGH Psychosis Clinical and Research Program (PCRP), which encompasses the First Episode and Early Psychosis Program (FEPP) and the Resilience and Prevention Program (RAPP). In addition, Leah oversees and manages the implementation of numerous clinical trials and manages the program's financial portfolio.
Faculty
Victoria Choate Hasler, PhD is an Instructor in Psychology at Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, and a researcher in the Resilience and Prevention and Prevention Program (RAPP). She received her doctorate in Clinical Psychology from the University of Massachusetts, Boston and completed her APA internship at Massachusetts Mental Health Center, Harvard Medical School. She completed her fellowship at the VA Boston Healthcare Center. She has worked clinically, administratively, and in research at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Cambridge Health Alliance, and now Massachusetts General Hospital. Her research and clinical work has centered on using evidence-based strategies to implement early intervention and prevention transdiagnostically and for psychotic spectrum disorders, with the hopes of enhancing resilience and wellbeing early on to buffer against risk. She has also studied biological bases of psychotic illnesses, and addressing racial and ethnic disparities in access to care for young people with psychotic disorders.
Louis Vinke, PhD received his doctorate in Computational Neuroscience from Boston University. His PhD research focused on how visuocortical activity varies across relative and absolute feature dimensions, and employing adaptation as a tool to measure complex population response functions. Currently, he is studying how non-verbal processes important for social communication and motivation differ between clinical and healthy populations, how these processes are supported by basic visual processing, and whether various functional neuroimaging measures can serve as objective markers of these deficits, while also contributing to a systems-level understanding of social behavior.
Roger Tootell, PhD, Associate Professor of Radiology, HMS, is an internationally recognized authority on the function and organization of the primate visual system. In addition, he was an early pioneer and developer of functional MRI methods. His previous work has investigated a wide range of functions of the visual system, including visual attention and motion perception, which are two functions of interest relevant to his current focus on investigating the neural basis of personal space. He and Dr. Holt have been collaborating since 2009, focusing on the roles of lower-level features, attention/motion, and emotional learning in face processing, interpersonal distance in healthy subjects and in psychosis.
Alumni, Collaborators, & Associated Programs
Alumni
Emily A. Boeke, BS - PhD student in Cognition & Perception, New York University
Brittany S. Cassidy, PhD - Post-Doctoral Fellow, Indiana University
Garth Coombs III, BS - PhD student in Cognition, Brain, & Behavior, Harvard University
Stephanie N. DeCross, BA - PhD student in Clinical Psychology, Harvard University
Jessica Mow, BA - PhD student in Clinical Psychology, Boston University
Logan Leathem, BA, BS - PhD student in Clinical Psychology, University of California Los Angeles (UCLA)
Olga Terechina, MD - Psychiatry Resident, Berkshire Medical Center
Lauri Tuominen, MD PhD - Assistant Professor, University of Ottawa, The Royal Ottawa Institute for Mental Health Research
Richard Vettermann - MD student, Technical University Dresden, Germany
Maeve Ward, BA - MD student, Sidney Kimmel Medical College
Rick P. F. Wolthusen - MD student, Technical University Dresden, Germany; Co-founder, On the Move eV
Yushan (Wisteria) Deng, BA - PhD student in Clinical Psychology, Yale University
Amritha Harikumar, MA - PhD student in Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, Georgia State University
Caroline Kale, BA - MSW student, New York University (NYU)
Samantha Hines, BA - MA student, Worcester Polytechnic Institute
Sarah Zapetis, BS - PhD student in Clinical Psychology, University of Southern California
Yolanda I. Whitaker, BS - Research Coordinator at Mount Sinai Hospital
Jordan Zimmerman, BS - PhD student in Clinical Psychology, Harvard University
Clayton Jeffrey, BS - MS student, McGill University
Tracy Barbour, MD - Medical Director of Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation Clinic in the MGH Psychiatry Department
Gwang-Won Kim, PhD - Chonnam National University Medical School and Hospital, Gwangju, Korea
Zahra (Mona) Nasiriavanaki, MD - Neurology Resident at Cleveland Clinic Florida
Lauren Luther, PhD - Assistant Professor of Psychology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham
Rachel Sussman, BS - Health Data Science S.M. student at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
McKain Williams, BS - Senior Clinical Research Assistant at Oregon Health & Science University; Founder, Unstable Bagel
Drew Coman, PhD - Assistant Professor in Psychology in the Department of Psychiatry at MGH and Instructor at HMS
Katherine Dokholyan, BS - Clinical Research Coordinator in the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital
Elizabeth Eberlin, MA - PhD student in Clinical Psychology, Michigan State University
Collaborators
Randy L. Buckner, PhD
Benjamin K. Brent, MD, MS
Corinne Cather, PhD
Bradford C. Dickerson, MD
Amy H. Farabaugh, PhD
Maurizio Fava, MD
Oliver Freudenreich, MD
Newfei Ho, PhD
Gina R. Kuperberg, MD
Hesheng Liu, PhD
Joseph Mandeville, PhD
Mohammed R. Milad, PhD
Maren B. Nyer, PhD
Tracey Petryshen, PhD
Joshua L. Roffman, MD, MMSc
Bruce R. Rosen, MD, PhD
Benjamin G. Shapero, PhD
Martha E. Shenton, PhD
Lee S. Cohen, MD
Daniel Fulford, PhD
Jacqueline A. Clauss, MD, PhD
Faye McKenna, PhD
Nicole DeTore, PhD
Associated Programs
Psychosis Clinical & Research Program (PCRP)
First Episode & Early Psychosis Program (FEPP)
Recovery and Ongoing Care Clinic (ROCC)
Resilience & Prevention Program (RAPP)
Resilience Evaluation-Social Emotional Training (RE-SET) Program
Supported by
National Institute of Mental Health
The Sidney R. Baer, Jr Foundation
The Henry and Allison McCance Center for Brain Health
The MGH Research Scholar Program
The MGH Executive Committee on Research (ECOR)
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