People

Principal Investigator

Catherine J. Chu, MD, MMSc, MA

Dr. Chu is a board-certified child neurologist, epileptologist, and neurophysiologist at Massachusetts General Hospital and Associate Professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School.  She received her BS in neurobiology and behavior from the Univ of Washington, MD and MMSc from Harvard Medical School, and MA from Harvard University (Social Anthropology). Dr. Chu is the director of neonatal and pediatric EEG monitoring at MGH. Clinically, she specializes in EEG analysis, seizure localization, surgical planning, and neuromodulation for patients with difficult to control epilepsy. Dr Chu’s research focuses on identifying and understanding how brain rhythms contribute to seizures and cognitive symptoms in epilepsy using invasive and noninvasive multimodal imaging. Actively funded projects in the Chu Lab include studies on thalamocortical circuit dysfunction in epileptic encephalopathies, understanding the underlying neuronal mechanisms and clinical utility of spike ripples in epilepsy, improving neuromodulation in cortical epilepsy, and understanding the relationship between hippocampal rhythms and sleep-dependent memory function. She is also active in several multicenter collaborative networks to improve our understanding of neonatal seizures and early life epilepsies. Outside of work, Dr. Chu is the proud mom to 3 awesome kids and enjoys tackling endless home improvement projects with her husband. [Link to CV]

Wen received her PhD degree in Electrical Engineering from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore in 2015 and Bachelor of Engineering degree in Computer Science from Jinan University, P. R. China in 2011. Wen has worked on various types of analysis of biomedical signals including ECG, EEG, PSG, MRI, and acoustic signals. She is interested in building automated analytic models by developing predictive, actionable algorithms for better performance and efficiency. In the Chu Lab, Wen is developing tools to detect and analyze spike ripples as an improved biomarker for the epileptogenic cortex compared to either spikes or ripples alone.

Grace Xiao, BS
Medical School Student Research Assistant

Grace Xiao is a medical school student at Johns Hopkins. Previously, she did her undergraduate work at Harvard studying neurobiology and economics. She is interested in creating impact through research, policy and entrepreneurship. In the Chu lab, Grace assisted with collecting and analyzing neuroimaging data for the BECTS project and works on a project looking at spikes in children with BECTS.

Anvitha Sathya
Medical School Student Research Assistant

Anvitha is currently a third year student in Boston University’s Seven Year BA/MD program with a minor in English and an interest in neurological patient care. She has previously worked in labs studying neuromuscular diseases and neurological injuries and is excited to work at the Chu lab to study neurological communication and localization through clinical studies.

John McLaren, MD
Pediatric Neurology Fellow

John is currently a Pediatric Neurology fellow at Massachusetts General Hospital. He completed his child neurology residency at MGH and his undergraduate degree at Boston College, majoring in Music and Neuroscience, and his Medical Doctorate at the University of Vermont College of Medicine. After completing his Neurology training, he will be staying on at MGH as an Epilepsy fellow. His research interest is in diagnostics and therapeutics for children with epileptic encephalopathies.

Yancheng Luo, MD
Pediatric Neurology Fellow

YC (Yancheng) Luo is a graduating Child Neurology fellow at Massachusetts General Hospital. After graduation, he will start as a junior faculty at Boys Town National Research Hospital in Omaha, Nebraska.  During his residency, he started working with Dr. Chu on electrophysiology data analysis and he hopes to continue this research interest in his career. 

Summer Uhrich
Undergraduate Student Research Assistant

Summer is currently a student at Boston College majoring in Neuroscience with an interest in Behavioral Neuroscience. As an intern in the Chu Lab, she will help perform automated spike detection on multicenter intracranial EEG datasets and assist with cognitive tasks and MEG/EEG/MRI data collection on subjects in the research setting.

Tai Chu-Shore
Webmaster

Tai Chu-Shore is a high school student and Dr. Chu’s child. They do not currently study medicine, and instead focus their time on the traditional high school curriculum. As well as that, they maintain this website.

Elizabeth Spencer, PhD (graduate student in mathematics and statistics, Boston University / post-doc at Carnegie Mellon University)

McKenna Parnes, MSEd, PhD (graduate student in psychology / psychology residency, Brown University)

Lauren Ostrowski, BS (honors undergraduate student in neuroscience, Brown University / MD, PhD Candidate, MSTP, University of California San Diego)

Wenting Xie, BS (clinical research coordinator / computer science MS candidate, Cornell University)

Grace Xiao, MD (honors undergraduate student in neuroscience, Harvard University / MD Candidate, Johns Hopkins Medical School)

Rebecca Weiss, BS (clinical research coordinator / MGH neonatology clinical research coordinator)

Anehita Oribabor, MEng (clinical research coordinator / industry)

Kyla Cordrey, BS (honors undergraduate student in neuroscience, Harvard University / MD Candidate, Johns Hopkins Medical School)

Sally Stoyell, BS (research coordinator / Psychology PhD Candidate, University of Minnesota)

Katica Boric, PhD, MSc (clinical research coordinator / Decision Lab Manager, Spain)

Dan Song, BSE (research coordinator / Biomedical Engineering PhD Candidate, Northwestern University)

Juan Diaz, BS (clinical research coordinator / MBA candidate, Dartmouth University)

Emily Thorn, BS, MA (research coordinator, graduate student in neuroscience, Boston University / MDCandidate, Washington State University Medical Center)

Rayna Trietsch, BS (clinical research coordinator / MD candidate, Tufts University Medical School)

Lila Worden, MD (pediatric neurology resident researcher / Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia epilepsy fellowship)

Jennifer Leahy, BS (clinical research coordinator / Psychology PhD candidate, University ofMassachusetts)

Erin Ross, BS (co-op student, Northeastern University, research coordinator / MD Candidate, UC Southern California Medical School)

Stefania Sokolowski (honors undergraduate student in neuroscience, Boston University / strategic analyst, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center)