Our group
Interested in joining us for a short or longer while? Please get in touch with Sofie at valk [at] cbs [dot] mpg [dot] de or s [dot] valk [at] fz-juelich [dot] de
JiHoon Kim
PhD candidate
JiHoon is a new PhD candidate and currently exploring how to apply computational approaches to understand multiscale structure-function associations.
Sarah Sobotta
PhD candidate, IMPRS
Sarah is a PhD student with a background in neuroscience and social sciences. In her research, she aims to explore how social and environmental factors affect brain development.
Bin Wan
PhD candidate, IMPRS
Bin is studying asymmetry of brain organization. In parallel, he has wide interests in how the human mind (from behavior, ideology to brain circuits) is shaped by nature and nurture. Personal website.
Amin Saberi
PhD candidate, HIBALL
Amin studies the link between excitation-inhibition and cortical structure, and their development in typically developing adolescents and those at higher risk for psychopathology.
Meike Hettwer
PhD candidate, School of Cognition
Meike is a PhD student at Max Planck School of Cognition. Her work aims to understand how brain organization shapes resilience and vulnerability in mental health, in the larger context of transdiagnostic psychiatry and network-based pathology.
Neville Magielse
PhD candidate, HIBALL
Neville just started on his PhD on the cognitive function of the cerebellum. He will consider this from different perspectives, by looking at cerebellar evolution, microstructure, and functional imaging.
Ekaterina Manoli
PhD candidate
Katerina studies the role of the developing and adult cerebellum in social cognition, and more specifically in Theory of Mind. She focuses on structural and functional connectivity between the cerebellum and the cerebral cortex, as well as the effect of cerebellar maturation on the early-life emergence of Theory of Mind.
Bianca Serio
PhD candidate, School of Cognition
Bianca is a PhD student at the Max Planck School of Cognition. She studies sex differences and the effects of sex hormones on brain organization, with a particular interest in how these factors relate to emotion and affective disorders.
Alex John
PhD candidate, IMPRS
Alex found her interest in the thalamus, its structural connectivity with the cortex, and its role of orchestrating whole-brain activity. Additionally, with her background in biology, she likes to think about how to translate macroscale findings at the systems-level to the biological underpinnings at the microscale.
Mylla Marsiglia
PhD candidate, IMPRS
Mylla studies brain-wide covariance, co-maturation, and cognition, with a focus on the effects of early life stress (i.e., adverse early life experiences and socioeconomic factors) on the development and functioning of the amygdala and hippocampus.
Deniz Yilmas
Student intern
Deniz is a high school student from the USA who is shadowing Bianca and working on sex hormones and the brain.
Benjamin Hanisch
MD PhD
Ben studies the principles of neurotransmitter transporter and receptor molecule distribution in the brain and their link to hallmarks of brain function and disease, hoping to better understand the genesis and treatment of psychiatric illnesses.
Yiğit Eriguc
IMPRS PhD candidate
Yiğit is a PhD student at IMPRS CoNI that comes from a psychology/cognitive neuroscience background. He is interested in the relation between cognition and large-scale brain organisation.
Huantao Wen
PhD candidate
Huantao is a PhD candidate who comes from a background in clinical medicine. He just started his PhD in the lab and is particularly interested in the brain structural, functional and biomarkers organizational patterns during pathological status, and their relation with clinical symptoms and outcomes.
Sofie Valk
Research group leader
Sofie is Otto Hahn research group leader at the MPI in Leipzig, Germany and research group leader at INM-7 Juelich, Juelich, Germany. Together with her research group she studies interplay of structure and function in the human brain.
Satellites and affiliated members
Yun Shuang Fan
Professor
Yun Shuang was visiting the lab through the Chinese State-Sponsored Scholarship for joint PhD students program. She works on various projects bridging brain organization and Schizophrenia.
Giacomo Bignardi
PhD guest, School of Cognition
Giaco(mo) was born in the humanities but was raised by scientists. All grown up, he is trying to accept both past, pursuing a PhD on the biological basis of aesthetics with the Max Planck School of Cognition at the Language and Genetics Department of the MPI for psycholinguistics, in Nijmegen, while being a nomadic guest of the Frankfurt and Leipzig MPIs.
Svenja Küchenhoff
PhD guest
Svenja started a PhD with Timothy Behrens, and is currently a guest in our lab.
Elham Gholamzadeh
PhD guest
Elham currently works with Nico Scherf and is currently guest in our lab.
Anton Jakovčić
guest and MD
Anton is a MD from Croatia and currently guest in the lab.
Şeyma Bayrak
guest and MD
Şeyma studies the functional and structural organisation of the human brain. She loves big data and computational challenges and recently the functional neurosurgery.
Key collaborators
Past members, visitors and interns
(Incomplete) list of past members and people interning or visiting the lab since 2020 - let me know if you miss yourself.