News

06/16/2026

As part of the OHBM Women Faculty Special Interest Group, Drs. Makowski and Rai contributed to a valuable roundtable event geared towards bringing women faculty together at at the annual Organization for Human Brain Mapping meeting in Bordeaux, France. It was so inspiring to see women in academia elevate each other and form a stronger sense of community. Already looking forward to our future online events and plans for the 2027 conference in Toronto!

06/05/2026

Dr. Makowski had the privilege of presenting her faculty mentor, Dr. Christina Wierenga, with the Academy for Eating Disorders Leadership Award in Research during the International Conference on Eating Disorders in the Hague, Netherlands. This award honors an individual who has, over a substantial period of time (10+ years) used research to develop new knowledge about eating disorders that is internationally respected. We truly couldn't think of anyone more deserving. Dr. Wierenga has also been instrumental in ensuring that the BRIDGE Lab's research in eating disorders is grounded in a clinical perspective. Warmest congratulations, Dr. Wierenga!

11/19/2025

Abhay Lal and Ali Rigby present their work at the annual Society for Neuroscience (SfN) meeting in San Diego! SfN is the world's largest organization of neuroscientists, with over 30,000 members, providing an excellent venue for discussion and providing new research perspectives for trainees. 

09/04/2025

Ali Rigby, Ashley Becker, and Jon Ahern present their work at the annual Flux meeting in Dublin, Ireland! This meeting brings together scientists from around the world working in integrative developmental cognitive neuroscience. 

09/04/2025

Dr. Carolina Makowski is awarded the Flux Society's Young Investigator Award! The Young Investigator Award in Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, supported by the Kennedy Krieger Institute, recognizes outstanding contributions by scientists early in their careers. On Sept 4, 2025, Dr. Makowski highlighted some of her scientific discoveries and the collaborations that have made them possible at the annual Flux meeting in Dublin, Ireland in her talk entitled "Building bridges through multi-scale neuroscience and collaborations to map adolescent development". You can check out her interview with the Flux Communications Committee here. 

08/06/2025

Abhay Lal and fellow students at UCSD win first prize in the Prowess data challenge with the National Data Platform! This competition was made possible by a partnership with the Wildfire Science & Technology Commons and hosted by the San Diego Supercomputing Center. Abhay will be presenting this work at the annual International Conference on Parallel Processing in San Diego (September 8-11, 2025). Congrats, Abhay and team!

07/16/2025

Dr. Carolina Makowski and researchers at the UCSD Eating Disorders Center (including Dr. Christina Wierenga, Dr. Amanda Bischoff-Grethe, and Megan Martinho) publish new work in Molecular Psychiatry, which mapped multivariate brain-behavior patterns in a sample of 91 adolescent girls with an eating disorder. Check out the paper and a lay summary of the work!

06/16/2025

Ashley Becker ties for first place for the Robert Glushko '79 Cognitive Science Honors Thesis Award 2025, for her thesis entitled "Investigating associations between mental health, cognition, and brain imaging within the ABCD Study"! We are so proud of Ashley and happy to see the Department of Cognitive Science at UCSD recognize the incredible work Ashley has done over the last year. Congratulations, Ashley!