Principal Investigator
Dr. Alex Lussier is an Assistant Professor at McLean Hospital and Harvard Medical School, studying mental health’s social and biological determinants. He received his BSc in Biochemistry from McGill University and a PhD in Medical Genetics from the University of British Columbia. Alex’s graduate research focused on the consequences of prenatal alcohol exposure on neurobiological pathways and epigenetic mechanisms in the brain. As a postdoctoral fellow in the Dunn Lab at MGH, Alex subsequently trained in genetics and psychiatric epidemiology. He transitioned to an Instructor role and started his own research group in June 2023. His current research focuses on identifying sensitive periods and epigenetic mechanisms that explain when and how early-life experiences, such as childhood adversity and prenatal alcohol exposure, influence psychopathology and resilience across the life course.
Research Staff
Data Analyst
Ka Ying Toby Law
Toby is a Data Analyst I at the Lussier Lab. She completed her BSc (Hons) in Biotechnology at the University of Edinburgh in 2019, where she was inspired to further her training in bioinformatics and scientific data analytics. She then obtained her MA in Quantitative Methods in the Social Sciences from Columbia University in 2022. Her project highlights include publishing a statistical modelling pipeline that predicts structural changes in RNA molecules under differential conditions, and finding quantitative evidence that education curriculum reform is a potential mitigator of COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy in the US. Toby has an invested interest in strategies that promote public scientific literacy and aspires to improve accessibility and effectiveness of mental health interventions in her professional career. At the Lussier Lab, she looks forward to bringing her interdisciplinary skillset and bifocal academic training to the table, investigating how adverse childhood experiences can be embedded epigenetically to influence psychopathology manifestation later in life.
Clinical Research Coordinator
Nicole Palmer
Nicole (she/her) is a Clinical Research Coordinator at the Lussier Lab and a Master’s student in Clinical Social Work at Boston College, specializing in Social Neuroscience and Advanced Statistical Analysis. She graduated Magna Cum Laude from Georgia State University with a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology. Following her graduation, Nicole gained clinical and research experiences focusing on behavioral and emotional challenges in marginalized populations. Her research focuses on how childhood adversity and environmental stressors shape neurobiological and genetic factors, influencing behavioral outcomes in marginalized populations. Through the integration of social neuroscience and genetics, she seeks to better understand the root causes of mental health disparities in children and adolescents by identifying risk factors, reducing barriers, and developing culturally relevant interventions. She plans to pursue doctoral studies to expand her research and advocate for systemic change in mental health practices for marginalized communities.
Collaborators
Charlotte Cecil – Erasmus University Medical Center
Erin C. Dunn – Massachusetts General Hospital
Anke Hüls – Emory University
Colter Mitchell – University of Michigan
Kerry Ressler – McLean Hospital
Andrew Simpkin – National University of Ireland, Galway
Andrew Smith – University of the West of England
Matthew Suderman – University of Bristol
Joanne Weinberg – University of British Columbia
Former Mentees
Aileen Luo – Research Assistant, McLean Hospital
Sarah Duval – Senior Undergraduate, Northeastern University
Olivia Greenaway – Senior Undergraduate, Columbia University
Charlotte Moody – Junior Undergraduate, Brown University
Dailin Luo – Senior Bioinformatic R&D Engineer at Novogene
Madison Bigler – Clinical Research Coordinator at University of Miami, under the supervision of Dr. Jill Ehrenreich-May
Emma Kohrt – Senior Undergraduate, Northeastern University
Janine Cerutti – Clinical Psychology PhD student at the University of Vermont
Emma Glickman – Medical student at the University of Rochester Medical Center
Daniella Gomez-Ochoa – Case Manager in the Respite Department of Boston Healthcare for the Homeless
Jiaxuan (Jessie) Liu – Associate at Analysis Group
Olivia Pickett – Manager, Patient Success, Sempre Health
Nitasha Siddique – Project Coordinator for the Texas CEAL Consortium at the Institute for Health Disparities, UNT Health Science Center
Brooke Smith – Senior Clinical Data Analyst at Modern Health
Isabel Schuurmans – Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Erasmus Medical Center
Sammy Stoll – Data Analyst in the Dunn Lab at Mass General Hospital
Natasha Wood – Clinical Psychology PhD candidate at Flinders University, South Australia
Yiwen Zhu – Fourth year PhD student at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
The Lussier Lab 