Research Group

Faculty & Group Leader

Joaquín Goñi, Ph.D
Associate Professor, August 2022 – Present
School of Industrial Engineering & Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering
Member of the Purdue Institute for Integrative Neuroscience (PIIN) Ph.D candidate
Member of the Purdue Systems Collaboratory (PSC)

Purdue University
West Lafayette, IN, USA
jgonicor@purdue.edu

@jgonicor

Associate Professor, August 2022 – Present, School of Industrial Engineering & Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering. Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN.

Assistant Professor, August 2015 – July 2022, School of Industrial Engineering & Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering. Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN.

Associate Research Scientist, August 2014 – August 2015, Indiana University Network Science Institute (IUNI), Indianapolis, IN.

Assistant Research Scientist, July 2014 – July 2014, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN.

Research Associate, June 2011 – June 2014, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN.

Postdoctoral Researcher, December 2008 – June 2011, Center for Applied Medical Research, Pamplona, Spain

PhD, 2005 - 2008. Department of Physics and Applied Mathematics. University of Navarra, Pamplona, Spain

Visiting Fellow, January 2007 – June 2007, Harvard University, Boston, MA

Visiting Fellow, April 2006 – August 2006, Boston, MA

MS, Computer Science, 2005, University of the Basque Country, Spain

BS, Computer Engineering, 2003, University of the Basque Country, Spain

Postdoctoral Researchers

Tanu Raghav
Postdoctoral researcher. (Starting July 1, 2024)
Having obtained my undergraduate degree from the University of Delhi, India, I am completing my Ph.D. at the Indian Institute of Technology Indore. During my doctoral research, I focused on the structural and spectral characteristics of multiplex networks, and  structural properties of hypergraphs. Starting in April 2024, I am set to join the CONNplexity Lab as a postdoctoral researcher, where my goal is to explore functional brain connectomics through the application of network science tools.
 

Graduate Students

Mintao Liu
Ph.D candidate
liu2549@purdue.edu
I earned my Bachelor’s degree in Mathematics at Xi'an Jiaotong University, China. I enjoyed implementing mathematical methods in practical problems when I was introduced to statistics, probability and operations research, so I chose operations research as my Master's major at University of Chinese Academy of Sciences. While earning my Master's I became interested in network science, and my intellectual curiosity and admiration for this motivated me to pursue a PhD. I am very excited to work with Prof. Joaquín Goñi and Prof. Mario Ventresca, and I hope we will do great research.

Daniel Guerrero
Ph.D student (August 2022 - )

2022 Frederick N. Andrews Fellowship

guerre50@purdue.edu

I’m an economist and computer scientist interested in Computational Neuroscience. I obtained my Bachelor’s degree in Economics at Universidad Tecnológica de México. I also hold a Master’s degree in Economics from Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas and a Master’s degree in Computer Science from Instituto de Investigaciones en Matemáticas Aplicadas y Sistemas (both in Mexico). I’m interested in network science, information theory, causality, computability and complexity. I decided to join CONNplexity Lab (headed by Prof. Joaquín Goñi) because its research agenda perfectly aligns with my research interests. I was awarded with the Frederick N. Andrews Fellowship in 2022.

Mahdi Moghaddam
Ph.D student (August 2022 - )

2023 Leslie Bottorff Fellow Summer Program

mmoghad@purdue.edu

I earned my bachelor’s degree in Mathematics from Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Iran. I began my graduate studies in University of Illinois in Chicago (UIC) as a computer science student before transferring to Purdue Industrial Engineering in 2020. I spent two years as a research and teaching assistant and joined CONNplexity Lab as a PhD student in August 2022. I am interested in the applications of mathematics and machine learning in computational neuroscience. The research objectives of CONNplexity Lab fit my academic and career goals perfectly and I am excited about working with Prof. Joaquín Goñi.

Yujing Zhang
Ph.D student (August 2023 - )

2023 Presidential Doctoral Excellence Award
2023 Ross Fellowshipctoral Excellence Award
2024 Leslie Bottorff Fellow Summer Program

zhan4992@purdue.edu

I earned my Bachelor’s degree in Electrical and Information Engineering from Hohai University, where I discovered my passion for applying computational techniques to practical challenges. Motivated by this interest, I pursued a Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania, focusing on complex systems and their complexities, particularly in the context of brain systems. In 2023, I proudly joined the CONNplexity Lab as a PhD student under Prof. Joaquin’s guidance. Notably, I was honored with the Presidential Doctoral Excellence Award and the Ross Fellowship.

Vitor Farias Costa de Carvalho
MSIE student (August 2023 - )

vcostade@purdue.edu

I earned my bachelor's degree in Industrial Engineering from Purdue University. During that time, I discovered my passion for research while being exposed to projects that highlighted the applications of mathematics, statistics, and network science to different fields. Most notably, I was intrigued by their applications to neuroscience when I had the opportunity to collaborate with Prof. Joaquín Goñi on one of his projects. I have joined CONNplexity Lab as a Master's student to continue being a part of an amazing team while working on exciting research projects.

Undergraduate Students

Rachael Snow
Undergraduate IE student
snow21@purdue.edu
I am an undergraduate student studying industrial engineering, with a strong interest in mathematics, organizational leadership, and code. I also hold a passion for travel and plan to study and intern abroad in Ecuador in alignment with my Spanish and Global Studies minors. Most recently, I am investigating opportunities in technical and business management consulting and serve as a student consultant for Purdue Solutions. As a member of this lab, I am working to develop an algorithm in Matlab to improve the functional connectome fingerprinting which will serve as a basis for further analytics assessing neurological behaviors using fMRI testing. Engaging my curiosity in networks and information flow, I enjoy the challenge of exploring neurological networks, mathematical modeling, and programming

External Members

Brad Fitzgerald
PhD Student, Electrical and Computer Engineering, Purdue University
fitzge45@purdue.edu
I completed my Bachelor’s degree in Engineering with an Electrical Concentration at Olivet Nazarene University in 2018, where I completed an undergraduate research project on vocal processing with spectral analysis. Following this I came to Purdue University to pursue my PhD in Electrical and Computer Engineering with an interest in medical applications of signal/image processing. I am a part of the Purdue Neurotrauma group under Dr. Thomas Talavage and am currently studying the effects of participation in youth contact sports on resting-state functional connectome identifiability. In addition I am collaborating with Dr. Joaquín Goñi to explore multi-site subject identifiability based on T1-weighted MRI. 

Miji Um
PhD student in Clinical Psychology with Dr. Melissa Cyders, Associate Professor, Dept. of Psychology, School of Science, IUPUI
My research focuses on the neurocognitive mechanisms underlying impulsivity and risk-taking behaviors. I received an NIAAA F31 fellowship to support my dissertation project examining the relationship between positive urgency (i.e., a tendency to act rashly under extreme positive emotions) and alcohol-related risk-taking using oral alcohol administration and emotion induction methods as well as complex whole-brain connectomic analyses using resting-state fMRI data. I am excited to work with Dr. Goñi and his group to learn more about brain network science.

Long-term Visitors

Benjamin Chiem
PhD student in Université catholique de Louvain

Visiting scholar at CONNplexity Lab, March 2020

I graduated in Applied Mathematics Engineering at the Université catholique de Louvain (UCLouvain, Belgium). Since then, I started a PhD program under the co-supervision of Pr. Jean-Charles Delvenne and Dr. Frédéric Crevecoeur, and thanks to the funding of a FRIA grant (F.R.S.-FNRS, Belgium). My research interests include complex networks, data science, dynamical systems, machine learning and information theory, with the motivation of applying these fields to the analysis of neural data. For instance, I investigated during my master thesis the supervised classification of brain networks, with application to the identification of stable biomarkers in schizophrenia. My current project revisits the structure-function relationship in the human connectome from a system-theoretic viewpoint, by using concepts of network controllability and uncovering task-specific driver regions. With the CONNplexity Lab, I would like to investigate the potential of the 'Differential Identifiability' framework in my research, especially for the subject-level analysis. I am really excited to visit the CONNplexity Lab and I am looking forward to collaborating with the whole team!

Federico Ramírez Toraño, Ph.D

Ángeles Tepper

External Collaborators

Sumra Bari, Ph.D
Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Northwestern University.
sumra.bari@northwestern.edu
I earned my Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Engineering and Technology, Lahore, Pakistan, and my Master's from Purdue University in Electrical and Computer Engineering. As a research assistant, I am a part of the Purdue Neurotrauma Group and have explored the relationship between metabolic changes and head acceleration event characteristics in youth contact sports athletes, using Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy. Currently, I am analyzing multi-site reproducibility of brain fingerprints in resting-state functional connectomes and structural connectomes based on DWI. I am excited to explore new methods which would help in combining data for larger multi-site studies.

Alumni - Former CONNplexity Lab Members

Vibha Viswanathan
PhD Student, Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering
I received a BE degree in Electronics and Communication Engineering from Anna University, India in 2006, then completed a Master's degree in Electrical Engineering at University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, in 2007, specializing in Signal Processing. Following this, I worked at The MathWorks for seven years, developing, testing and providing application support for mathematical software (MATLAB and Simulink). In 2015, I joined the Center for Computational Neuroscience and Neural Technology at Boston University, where I studied the neural mechanisms of speech-in-noise perception using electroencephalography (EEG) and techniques from network science. During the Fall 2016 semester, I joined Prof. Joaquín Goñi's lab at Purdue University as a graduate student. I am interested in studying complex systems in nature which exhibit a degree of orderly emergent behavior, despite being composed of parts that seemingly interact with each other in a disorderly manner. In particular, I am interested in using techniques from network science, nonlinear dynamics, signal processing, and statistics to characterize complex systems that occur in a variety of disciplines including neuroscience. For my PhD work, I use functional neuroimaging data to study patterns of brain connectivity in health and disease. I received a Lynn Fellowship from the Purdue Graduate School for the academic year 2016-17.

Enrico Amico, Ph.D

(Postdoctoral Researcher at CONNplexity Lab, 2016-2019)

SNSF Ambizione Fellow and Principal Investigator at EPFL. Geneva, Switzerland.
enrico.amico@epfl.ch
I'm a physicist who graduated from the University Federico II of Naples, Italy. After earning my Master's in 2012, I decided to follow my passion for the scientific study of consciousness. I enrolled in a joint PhD program between the Coma Science Group, University of Liège, and the Marinazzo Lab at the University of Ghent, Belgium. During my four years there as a PhD student I mainly focused on implementing new methods for brain connectivity assessment across levels of consciousness.  I joined the CONNplexity Lab  (headed by Prof. Joaquín Goñi) as a Postdoctoral researcher from October 2016 until November 2019, where I made contributions on proposing new network science models for functional and structural brain connectomics.

Meenusree Rajapandian
MSIE, Purdue University 2020

I completed my Bachelor's in Electrical and Electronics Engineering at PSG College of Technology, India, after which I worked as a Product Development Engineer. In February 2020, I completed my Master's thesis in Industrial Engineering at the CONNplexity Lab (Purdue IE). I currently work as a Data Analyst at Gecko Robotics in Pittsburgh, PA. My role focuses on building statistical models that facilitate making data-driven decisions to maintain critical infrastructure in various industries. I also contribute towards building data pipelines that processes the data and ensure its quality.

Michael Wang
MSIE, Purdue University 2020

I completed my Bachelor of Science degrees in Neuroscience and Biology at Indiana University Bloomington in 2016, where I studied topics including the neurobiology of addiction and electroencephalography (EEG). In July 2020, I completed my Master's thesis in Industrial Engineering at the CONNplexity Lab (Purdue IE). Currently, I am working as a Data Scientist at Procter & Gamble in Cincinnati, Ohio where I am working on Programmatic Marketing. I am developing machine learning models to create smart audiences and improve upon P&G’s marketing strategy. I'm very excited to leverage the power of big data to help make informed and impactful decisions in the consumer packaged goods industry.

Uttara Tipnis, Ph.D
(Ph.D at CONNplexity Lab, 2016-2021)

Dr. Uttara Tipnis obtained her Ph.D from Purdue IE in April 2021. She is the first Ph.D graduate at CONNplexity Lab!  Dr. Tipnis is now working at Lawrence Livermore National Lab (LLNL) as a Computer Vision Postdoctoral Researcher in the Computation Engineering Division. She is working primarily on analyzing the functional and structural MRI data collected as part of the Transforming Research and Clinical Knowledge in Traumatic Brain Injury (TRACK-TBI) consortium led by the University of California, San Francisco in collaboration with three of U.S. Department of Energy's national labs and several other universities across the country. Furthermore, Uttara will also lend her expertise to other projects involving neuroimaging and traumatic brain injury.

Kausar Abbas, Ph.D
(Postdoctoral Researcher at CONNplexity Lab, 2018-2022)
Software Research Engineer/Scientist at Intel Corporation
I earned my Bachelor’s in Electrical Engineering from the University of Engineering and Technology, Lahore, Pakistan. I earned my PhD in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Purdue University, where as part of the Purdue Neurotrauma Group I explored the short- and long-term effects of subconcussive brain injury in high school football athletes. Toward the end of my PhD program, I discovered the utility and elegance of tools developed by network science in studying brain networks, and I changed my focus from brain injury to general network science. After a post-doc focused in Brain Connectomics at CONNplexity Lab, I am now a Software Research Engineer/Scientist at Intel Corporation.

Duy Anh Duong-Tran, Ph.D
(Ph.D at CONNplexity Lab, 2017-2022)

2017 Ross Fellowship

PennMedicine Postdoctoral Research Fellow

Before coming to Purdue University, I earned Bachelor's degrees in Mathematics and Industrial/Entrepreneurial Engineering, and a Master's degree in Industrial Engineering, at Western Michigan University. At WMU, I became greatly interested in theoretical frameworks such as Spectral Graph Theory, Random Graph, Random Matrix Theory, Combinatorics, Stochastic Processes, and their applications to various complex networks. As I begin my research career, I would like to contribute to both the theoretical foundations of complex networks and their applications in structural/functional human brain connectomics. I find that my research passions align well with Dr. Joaquín Goñi’s research interests. Recently I’ve also become very interested in neuroplasticity and its relationship to time-dependent (online) network models such as the Preferential Attachment Model. I am also very fascinated about theoretical/applied community detection approaches in network science. I received a Ross Fellowship for the academic year 2017-18.