Early Career Contributors

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Authors List

  • Bahar Aksoy, PhD

    Dr. Aksoy’s research focuses on pediatric pain, child health, and evidence-based nursing care, with particular interests in pain assessment and management, non-pharmacological approaches, and the psychosocial dimensions of pain in children and adolescents...

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  • Thalis Asimakopoulos, MD

    Dr. Asimakopoulos is an anesthesiology resident at the Department of Anesthesiology and Pain Medicine, Aretaieion University Hospital, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece. He recently completed a postdoctoral research fellowship at John...

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  • Courtney Bannerman, PhD

    Dr. Bannerman completed her BSc and PhD at Queen's University in Canada. During her PhD, she investigated the role of the gut microbiome on pain and neuroinflammation after spinal cord injury, as well as the circadian rhythm of thermal nociception. Dr. Ba...

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  • Paramita Basu, MS, PhD

    Research Assistant Professor, University of Pittsburgh

    ECC Role: Lead Webinars

    Research Goal: To identify more effective and better-tolerated therapeutics for chronic pain.

    Researc...

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  • Stephanie Bourke, PhD

    Dr. Bourke completed her PhD at the University of Galway, Ireland, under the supervision of Prof. David Finn. Her doctoral research investigated the neurobiological mechanisms underlying stress and pain, with particular emphasis on their interaction and t...

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  • Adam Dourson, PhD

    Dr. Dourson is a basic pain researcher whose research focuses on injuries and diseases that impact peripheral systems, especially the nervous and immune systems. Recently, he has been exploring neuroimmune interactions in the human dorsal root ganglia (DR...

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  • Francisco Isaac Fernandes Gomes Aragão, DDS, MSC, PhD

    Dr. Gomes-Aragão's research combines pharmacology, cellular physiology, and mitochondrial bioenergetics to elucidate mechanisms underlying inflammatory and chemotherapy-induced neuropathic pain. He earned his Ph.D. in Pharmacology with a visiting fellowsh...

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  • Ahmad Khater, PhD

    Mr Khater is a PhD candidate in the Oral Health Sciences program at McGill University working with Dr. Carolina Meloto  He is an internationally trained dentist, having earned his BDS in Egypt and an MSc in Dental Sciences at McGill University. His resear...

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  • Erik Koning

    Erik's research is based in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) and focuses on pain in preterm and extremely preterm infants. He specializes in clinimetric research, the evaluation of pain management strategies, and the development of models to better...

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  • Beatriz Lima Adjafre, PhD

    Dr. Adjafra’s research focuses on the mechanisms underlying the development of chemotherapy-induced neuropathic pain using a combination of immunology, pharmacology, cellular biology, and neuroimmunology. She earned her Ph.D. in Immunology from the Univer...

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  • Karen Lindquist, PhD

    Dr. Lindquist is a postdoctoral researcher at The University of Texas at Austin studying peripheral mechanisms that contribute to chronic pain with Dr. Robert Messing. Her research focuses on mechanotransduction and nociceptive plasticity in orofacial pai...

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  • Malaika Mahmood

    Malaika is a doctoral student in Center for Neuroscience at the University of Pittsburgh. She has a strong background in pain research, having contributed to various projects examining how pain is processed in the brain, and plans to continue building on...

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  • Laura Maile, PhD

    Postdoctoral Fellow, Washington University in Saint Louis

    ECC Role: Lead Papers that Made Us

    Research Goal: To understand the relationship between stress, addiction, and pain

    Research Foc...

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  • Anshu Maley

    Anshu Maley is a PhD researcher with a background in psychology and a strong interest in statistics, research methods, and understanding human behaviour. She has a broad interest in psychological research and is particularly interest...

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  • Jaclyn Merlo, MS

    Jaclyn is a PhD candidate in the Integrated Biomedical Sciences Program at UT Health San Antonio. Her research focuses on studying peripheral mechanisms of oral tumorigenesis and cancer pain, under Dr. Shivani Ruparel, with the goal to identify novel t...

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  • Dana Mominkhan, BDS, DScD

    Dr. Mominkhan is a clinician-scientist and Endodontist. She attended King Abdulaziz University in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, where she earned her Bachelor of Dental Surgery degree. After graduation, she pursued postgraduate training in Endodontics at the Unive...

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  • Juliet Mwirigi, PhD

    Dr. Mwirigi is a postdoctoral fellow in the Gereau lab. Her research integrates human tissue and rodent models to study chronic pain mechanisms, with a focus on G protein-coupled receptors such as cannabinoid receptor 1. She combines transcriptomics, deep...

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  • Priya Saraswathi Narayanan, MS

    As a research associate and a recent master’s graduate in Immunology and Infection from University of Texas Health, San Antonio, Priya is continuing her master’s research project in Dr Shivani Ruparel’s lab, focusing on ‘Understanding the Mechanism of TRP...

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  • Tyler Nelson, PhD

    Dr. Nelson uses molecular, genetic, electrophysiological, and behavioral approaches to investigate peripheral and central mechanisms of neuropathic, neurodegenerative, and neuromuscular pain. He currently holds a K00 award centered on the parabrachial nuc...

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  • Al Nie

    Neuroscience PhD student at Johns Hopkins
    Alban Latremoliere and Xinzhong Dong labs

    Former undergraduate trainee in Dr. Brad Taylor’s lab and the Pittsburgh Center for Pain Research (graduated 2025)

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  • Nadine Oury

    Nadine Oury is in the Cellular and Molecular Pathology Graduate Program at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. She is currently conducting her doctoral research in the Pittsburgh Center for Pain Research with Dr. S. Ross. Her work uses two-ph...

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  • Palash Raghuwanshi. MS

    Mr. Raghuwanshi holds a master's in clinical psychology and is currently working as a Project Associate at IIT-Kanpur.  His research focuses on examining the neural correlates of negative affect and physical pain using EEG, Eye Tracking, and electrical st...

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  • Lyuba Salih, PhD

    Dr. Salih is a postdoctoral scholar in the Department of Neurobiology and Pittsburgh Center of Pain Research (PCPR) at the University of Pittsburgh. Mentored by Dr. Michael Gold, she is fascinated by the neuro-immune axis and its contribution to the devel...

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  • Harrison Stratton, PhD

    Dr. Stratton's research is focused on understanding peripheral and central nervous system interactions with the goal of developing novel non-opioid analgesics. In his current postdoctoral fellowship, he uses multiphoton calcium imaging and patch clamp ele...

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  • Ran Tao, BDS

    Ran Tao is a dentist and PhD candidate in Oral and Craniofacial Biomedical Sciences at Texas A&M University College of Dentistry. His research focuses on temporomandibular joint (TMJ) and trigeminal pain, specifically how microbiota-derived metabolite...

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  • Cristal Villalba, PhD

    Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Texas at San Antonio

    ECC Role: Media Outreach Coordinator-Liaison to PURPOSE Network, PRF Newsletter and IASP Newsletter

    Research Goal: To make complex...

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  • Jessica Wojick, PhD

    Postdoctoral Fellow, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

    ECC Role: Content Contributor

    Research Goal: To understand the neural mechanisms underlying pain and substance use disorders View profile

  • Lite Yang

    Lite is a graduate student in the DBBS neuroscience program at Washington University in St. Louis, and currently training with Dr. Rob Gereau and Dr. Vijay Samineni in the WashU Pain center. He is utilizing cuttting-edge sequencing technologies and develo...

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