The Cusack Lab
We study the development of infants in their first year of life. We are based at the Trinity College Institute of Neuroscience at Trinity College Dublin, and collaborate with maternity hospitals in Dublin and other centres across Ireland. Our expertise and backgrounds range from physics to psychology and neonatology to neuroscience. We use many methods to study infant development, including online tasks and MRI.
Principal Investigator
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Rhodri Cusack, MA (Hons) Cantab, PhD, FTCD
The Thomas Mitchell Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience Director, Trinity College Institute of Neuroscience School of Psychology Trinity College Dublin |
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The Team
Postdocs
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Param Ahir, PhD
Param completed her PhD at Gujarat Technological University, India (2025), where she focused on improving the generalisability and explainability of tissue segmentation models for infant brain MRI. At the Cusack Lab, she works on the Freezemotion project, developing deep learning–based tools for motion correction and reconstruction to improve functional MRI quality in infants. She holds a Master’s in Information Technology and a Bachelor’s in Computer Engineering, with research and teaching experience in AI and is interested in generative and explainable AI applications in healthcare. |
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Áine T. Dineen, PhD
Áine is a developmental cognitive neuroscientist who completed her PhD in the Cusack Lab in 2026. Her research uses a NeuroAI approach, combining awake infant fMRI with developmentally inspired deep neural networks to understand which visual features are encoded by the developing brain as infants view the world around them. As a member of the Foundations of Cognition project team, Áine has experience acquiring fMRI data from over 100 awake infants. She is also passionate about advancing methods for awake infant fMRI and is investigating methods to minimise head motion in this cohort through the FreezeMotion project. Áine has a background in neuroscience and completed her BA here at Trinity College Dublin in 2021, during which she carried out her undergraduate capstone project in the lab. |
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Kevin Campion
Graduate Students
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Marie Santillo (PhD Candiate)
Marie completed her MSc in Developmental Psychology at Maastricht University in 2021. Wanting to dive deeper into developmental neuroscience and neuroplasticity, she pursued a Research Master in Cognitive Neuroscience at the Donders Institute of Brain, Behavior and Cognition in Nijmegen (2024). For her thesis, she conducted research at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, using machine learning models to predict the impact of shared book reading on neural and cognitive development. |
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Muhammad Faizan (PhD Candiate)
Faizan completed his Master’s in Robotics and Intelligent Machine Engineering at the National University of Sciences & Technology (NUST), Islamabad, Pakistan, in 2025. His thesis focused on developing a novel neural network architecture for multi-modal brain imaging to advance brain cancer segmentation. At the Cusack Lab, he is working on collecting infant fMRI data and developing deep neural network methods for motion correction to enhance data quality for clinical applications |
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Kim N. Nolle (PhD Candidate, co-supervised with Prof Vinny Cahill)
Kim completed her MSc in Computer Science (Data Science) at Trinity College Dublin in 2024. She is currently pursuing a PhD in Computer Science on the topic of continual reinforcement learning. Kim is interested in the intersection between neuroscience and artificial intelligence, and how insights from neuroscience can be leveraged to develop RL agents that can continually adapt to new environments. |
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Research Assistants
Tamrin Holloway (Research Assistant, Lab Manager and Recruitment Coordinator)
Honours Students
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Carina Popa (Psychology, Trinity College Dublin)
Carina Popa is a final-year Psychology undergraduate student at Trinity College Dublin. Her final-year project combines infant neuroimaging with computational modelling to explore how early visual development is shaped by preterm birth, and she is particularly interested in developmental cognitive neuroscience and its applications to clinical psychology. |
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Maite Jacoby (Psychology, Trinity College Dublin)
Maite Jacoby is a 4th year psychology student at Trinity college Dublin. She is interested in research involving clinical trials and neuroscience, with a particular interest in how drugs influence the brain and peoples behaviour. In the future she hopes to pursue research in this area.
Maite Jacoby is a 4th year psychology student at Trinity college Dublin. She is interested in research involving clinical trials and neuroscience, with a particular interest in how drugs influence the brain and peoples behaviour. In the future she hopes to pursue research in this area.
Interns
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Amalia Racec (Freie Universität, Berlin)
Amalia is a final-year-student in the Psychology Undergraduate programme at the Freie Universität Berlin. Currently working as a visiting research assistant intern in the lab, she focusses on combining infants’ gaze patterns and their cortical activity while watching short videos. She is especially interested in early developmental neuroscience, memory development and clinical psychology. |
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Former Members
Postdocs (Cognitive Neuroscience)
Clíona O'Doherty (Trinity College Dublin)
Anna Truzzi (Trinity College Dublin)
Lorijn Zaadnoordijk (Trinity College Dublin)
Annika Linke (Western University)
Bobby Stojanoski (Western University)
Conor Wild (Western University)
Daniel Mitchell (University of Cambridge)
Alejandro Vicente-Grabovetsky (University of Cambridge)
Jason Taylor (CamCAN, Cambridge)
Postdocs (Neuroimaging methods)
Zi Ye (Trinity College Dublin)
Marta Correia (University of Cambridge)
Ciara Greene (University of Cambridge)
Stefan Hetzer (University of Cambridge)
Daniel Beauregard (University of Cambridge)
Postdocs (Clinical imaging)
Jeff Crukley (Western University)
Jingyun Chen (Western University, with Mark Daley)
Hester Duffy (Western University)
Charlotte Herzmann (Western University)
Leire Zubiaurre-Elorza (Western University)
Visiting Research Fellows
Hiromichi Hagihara (The University of Tokyo)
Programmer
Aya Myhr (Western University)
Lab Managers
Tamrin Holloway (Lab Manager, FOUNDCOG Recruitment Coordinator and Research Assistant)
Jessica White (FOUNDCOG Recruitment Coordinator and Research Assistant, Trinity College Dublin)
Enna-Louise D'Arcy (FOUNDCOG Recruitment Coordinator and Research Assistant, Trinity College Dublin)
Màiri Gardner (Trinity College Dublin)
Research Assistants
Clara Conyngham (Trinity College Dublin)
Amy Hogan (Trinity College Dublin)
Aoibhe De Burca (Trinity College Dublin)
Matteo Mattersburger (Trinity College Dublin)
Cameron Murphy (Trinity College Dublin)
Karolina Kucinskaite (Trinity College Dublin)
Katie Herbert (FOUNDCOG Research Assistant)
Amy Burke (Trinity College Dublin)
Calum Kyle (Trinity College Dublin)
Keelin Harrison (Trinity College Dublin)
Maebh Healy (Trinity College Dublin)
Nicole McDermott (Trinity College Dublin)
Oscar Markey (Trinity College Dublin)
Anna Birbeck (Trinity College Dublin)
Deborah Ness (Trinity College Dublin)
Michelle Tran (Western University)
Graduate Students
Áine Travers Dineen (PhD Trinity College Dublin)
Graham King (PhD Trinity College Dublin)
Cliona O'Doherty (PhD Trinity College Dublin)
Anna Kravchenko (PhD Trinity College Dublin)
Chiara Caldinelli (PhD Trinity College Dublin)
Laura Cabral (PhD Western University)
Patrick Gatutsi (MSc Neuroscience, Western University)
Jordynne Ropat (MSc Neuroscience, Western University)
Jacob Matthews (MSc Medical Biophysics, Western University)
Michelle Tran (MSc Neuroscience, Western University)
Annika Linke (PhD University of Cambridge)
Daniel Mitchell (PhD University of Cambridge)
Michele Veldsman (PhD University of Cambridge, with Daniel Mitchell)
Alejandro Vicente-Grabovetsky (PhD University of Cambridge)
Co-Supervised Graduate Students
Sarah Thompson (PhD University of Cambridge, with Bob Carlyon)
Karolina Moutsopoulou (PhD University of Cambridge, with Tom Manly)
Chris Dodds (PhD University of Cambridge, with Tom Manly)
Polly Peers (PhD University of Cambridge, with John Duncan)
Mark Stokes (PhD University of Cambridge, with John Duncan)
Michelle Tran (Western University, Canada)
Visiting Graduate Students
Josué Rico Picó (University of Granada)
Honours students
Chloe Plaschka (Neuroscience, Trinity College Dublin)
Alice Sommerville (Psychology, Trinity College Dublin)
Tongyue Sun (Higher Diploma Psychology, Trinity College Dublin)
Clara Conyngham (Neuroscience, Trinity College Dublin)
Amy Hogan (Psychology, Trinity College Dublin)
Simone Brady (Psychology, Trinity College Dublin)
Karolina Kucinskaite (Neuroscience, Trinity College Dublin)
Cameron Murphy (Psychology, Trinity College Dublin)
Amy Burke (Higher Diploma Psychology, Trinity College Dublin)
Maebh Healy (Psychology, Trinity College Dublin)
Thalia Garnett (Psychology, Trinity College Dublin)
Rūta Sevrukaitė (Higher Diploma Psychology, Trinity College Dublin)
Adrienne Mesa Sheehan (Neuroscience, Trinity College Dublin)
Maggie O Shea (Psychology Student, Trinity College Dublin)
Alex Graham (Neuroscience, Trinity College Dublin)
Áine Travers Dineen (Neuroscience, Trinity College Dublin)
Emma Hudson (Psychology, Trinity College Dublin)
Emily Markey (Psychology, Trinity College Dublin)
Lauren Travers (Neuroscience, Trinity College Dublin)
Aoife Daly (Psychology, Trinity College Dublin)
Anna Birbeck (Psychology, Trinity College Dublin)
Clíona O'Doherty (Neuroscience, Trinity College Dublin)
Madison Laurel Beaty (Neuroscience, Western University)
Laura Cabral (Psychology, Western University)
Vivek John (Physiology and Pharmacology, Western)
Ronak Patel (Neuroscience, Western University)
Kristen Turner (Western University, Canada)
Angela Westgate (Psychology, Western University)
Mason Kadem (Psychology, Western University)
Kristen Turner (Psychology, Western University)
Joanna Ryan (Psychology, Trinity College Dublin)
Lab Volunteers and Interns
Eric Yuelai Xin (Trinity College Dublin and Columbia University)
Mirjam Marx (University of Regensburg)
Corinna Naeve (The University of Groningen)
Grace Kaprielian (Trinity College and Columbia University)
Maria Novella Giobbio (Trinity College and Columbia University)
Sophia Ho (Trinity College and Columbia University)
Claire Ambre (Trinity College Dublin and Columbia University)
Anisha Wadhwa (Trinity College Dublin)
Camden Arnold (University of Notre Dame)
Maeve Kelly (Trinity College Dublin)
Oliver Shipston-Sharman (visiting Research Elective from Edinburgh University)
Gwenyth Gasper (University of Notre Dame)
Brenda Finlay (Trinity College Dublin)
Marcus Lo (Western University)
Roni Shanoada (Western University)
Claire Chambers (visting from École Normale Supérieure, Paris)
Lauren Forrest (Schulich School of Medicine, Western University, Canada)
Marcus Lo (Western University, Canada)
Andrew Nicholson (Western University, Canada)
Kim Ramos (visiting from Seton Hall University, NJ)
Clíona O'Doherty (Trinity College Dublin)
Anna Truzzi (Trinity College Dublin)
Lorijn Zaadnoordijk (Trinity College Dublin)
Annika Linke (Western University)
Bobby Stojanoski (Western University)
Conor Wild (Western University)
Daniel Mitchell (University of Cambridge)
Alejandro Vicente-Grabovetsky (University of Cambridge)
Jason Taylor (CamCAN, Cambridge)
Postdocs (Neuroimaging methods)
Zi Ye (Trinity College Dublin)
Marta Correia (University of Cambridge)
Ciara Greene (University of Cambridge)
Stefan Hetzer (University of Cambridge)
Daniel Beauregard (University of Cambridge)
Postdocs (Clinical imaging)
Jeff Crukley (Western University)
Jingyun Chen (Western University, with Mark Daley)
Hester Duffy (Western University)
Charlotte Herzmann (Western University)
Leire Zubiaurre-Elorza (Western University)
Visiting Research Fellows
Hiromichi Hagihara (The University of Tokyo)
Programmer
Aya Myhr (Western University)
Lab Managers
Tamrin Holloway (Lab Manager, FOUNDCOG Recruitment Coordinator and Research Assistant)
Jessica White (FOUNDCOG Recruitment Coordinator and Research Assistant, Trinity College Dublin)
Enna-Louise D'Arcy (FOUNDCOG Recruitment Coordinator and Research Assistant, Trinity College Dublin)
Màiri Gardner (Trinity College Dublin)
Research Assistants
Clara Conyngham (Trinity College Dublin)
Amy Hogan (Trinity College Dublin)
Aoibhe De Burca (Trinity College Dublin)
Matteo Mattersburger (Trinity College Dublin)
Cameron Murphy (Trinity College Dublin)
Karolina Kucinskaite (Trinity College Dublin)
Katie Herbert (FOUNDCOG Research Assistant)
Amy Burke (Trinity College Dublin)
Calum Kyle (Trinity College Dublin)
Keelin Harrison (Trinity College Dublin)
Maebh Healy (Trinity College Dublin)
Nicole McDermott (Trinity College Dublin)
Oscar Markey (Trinity College Dublin)
Anna Birbeck (Trinity College Dublin)
Deborah Ness (Trinity College Dublin)
Michelle Tran (Western University)
Graduate Students
Áine Travers Dineen (PhD Trinity College Dublin)
Graham King (PhD Trinity College Dublin)
Cliona O'Doherty (PhD Trinity College Dublin)
Anna Kravchenko (PhD Trinity College Dublin)
Chiara Caldinelli (PhD Trinity College Dublin)
Laura Cabral (PhD Western University)
Patrick Gatutsi (MSc Neuroscience, Western University)
Jordynne Ropat (MSc Neuroscience, Western University)
Jacob Matthews (MSc Medical Biophysics, Western University)
Michelle Tran (MSc Neuroscience, Western University)
Annika Linke (PhD University of Cambridge)
Daniel Mitchell (PhD University of Cambridge)
Michele Veldsman (PhD University of Cambridge, with Daniel Mitchell)
Alejandro Vicente-Grabovetsky (PhD University of Cambridge)
Co-Supervised Graduate Students
Sarah Thompson (PhD University of Cambridge, with Bob Carlyon)
Karolina Moutsopoulou (PhD University of Cambridge, with Tom Manly)
Chris Dodds (PhD University of Cambridge, with Tom Manly)
Polly Peers (PhD University of Cambridge, with John Duncan)
Mark Stokes (PhD University of Cambridge, with John Duncan)
Michelle Tran (Western University, Canada)
Visiting Graduate Students
Josué Rico Picó (University of Granada)
Honours students
Chloe Plaschka (Neuroscience, Trinity College Dublin)
Alice Sommerville (Psychology, Trinity College Dublin)
Tongyue Sun (Higher Diploma Psychology, Trinity College Dublin)
Clara Conyngham (Neuroscience, Trinity College Dublin)
Amy Hogan (Psychology, Trinity College Dublin)
Simone Brady (Psychology, Trinity College Dublin)
Karolina Kucinskaite (Neuroscience, Trinity College Dublin)
Cameron Murphy (Psychology, Trinity College Dublin)
Amy Burke (Higher Diploma Psychology, Trinity College Dublin)
Maebh Healy (Psychology, Trinity College Dublin)
Thalia Garnett (Psychology, Trinity College Dublin)
Rūta Sevrukaitė (Higher Diploma Psychology, Trinity College Dublin)
Adrienne Mesa Sheehan (Neuroscience, Trinity College Dublin)
Maggie O Shea (Psychology Student, Trinity College Dublin)
Alex Graham (Neuroscience, Trinity College Dublin)
Áine Travers Dineen (Neuroscience, Trinity College Dublin)
Emma Hudson (Psychology, Trinity College Dublin)
Emily Markey (Psychology, Trinity College Dublin)
Lauren Travers (Neuroscience, Trinity College Dublin)
Aoife Daly (Psychology, Trinity College Dublin)
Anna Birbeck (Psychology, Trinity College Dublin)
Clíona O'Doherty (Neuroscience, Trinity College Dublin)
Madison Laurel Beaty (Neuroscience, Western University)
Laura Cabral (Psychology, Western University)
Vivek John (Physiology and Pharmacology, Western)
Ronak Patel (Neuroscience, Western University)
Kristen Turner (Western University, Canada)
Angela Westgate (Psychology, Western University)
Mason Kadem (Psychology, Western University)
Kristen Turner (Psychology, Western University)
Joanna Ryan (Psychology, Trinity College Dublin)
Lab Volunteers and Interns
Eric Yuelai Xin (Trinity College Dublin and Columbia University)
Mirjam Marx (University of Regensburg)
Corinna Naeve (The University of Groningen)
Grace Kaprielian (Trinity College and Columbia University)
Maria Novella Giobbio (Trinity College and Columbia University)
Sophia Ho (Trinity College and Columbia University)
Claire Ambre (Trinity College Dublin and Columbia University)
Anisha Wadhwa (Trinity College Dublin)
Camden Arnold (University of Notre Dame)
Maeve Kelly (Trinity College Dublin)
Oliver Shipston-Sharman (visiting Research Elective from Edinburgh University)
Gwenyth Gasper (University of Notre Dame)
Brenda Finlay (Trinity College Dublin)
Marcus Lo (Western University)
Roni Shanoada (Western University)
Claire Chambers (visting from École Normale Supérieure, Paris)
Lauren Forrest (Schulich School of Medicine, Western University, Canada)
Marcus Lo (Western University, Canada)
Andrew Nicholson (Western University, Canada)
Kim Ramos (visiting from Seton Hall University, NJ)