Michelle Voss, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Psychology in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. She directs the Health, Brain, & Cognition Lab. Her research examines the neurobiological mechanisms associated with cognitive aging and age-related neurological diseases, and how to effectively intervene for improved cognition and quality of life. One line of projects focus on determining the effects of physical activity and sedentary behavior on the brain and cognition across the lifespan. A parallel line of studies examines age-related individual differences in the neural mechanisms of skill acquisition and associative memory. We also bring these two interests together by examining how physical activity affects learning and memory. We examine neural mechanisms using non-invasive neuroimaging techniques, such as structural and functional magnetic resonance imaging at MRRF.

Matthew Howard III, VanGuilder Professor and Chair of Neurosurgery, directs the Human Brain Research Lab (HBRL). This laboratory has extensive collaborations with leading figures in cognitive science, neuroscience, and neuroimaging both within the University of Iowa and also nationally and internationally. HBRL research activities are centered on experimental protocols involving neurosurgical patients who are undergoing clinically necessary procedures that require the use functional brain mapping techniques. These methods include delivery of electrical stimuli, brain cooling, and direct electrophysiological recordings using both surface and penetrating recording arrays. Anatomical and functional brain imaging is a critical aspect of all HBRL protocols. Pre and post-operative imaging is used to identify specific brain regions of interest and allow investigators to directly correlate the results of invasive experimental studies with findings from the non-invasive brain imaging methods, all in the same subjects.

Neuropsychological and neuroanatomical correlates of complex human behavior. My research deals with the following topics: visual recognition; face recognition; verbal and nonverbal learning and retrieval; nonconscious cognitive processing; acquired disorders of social conduct; emotional processing; psychophysiology. The work is aimed at understanding brain-behavior relationships in humans, at systems level. Two main approaches are used: (1) the lesion method, in which brain-damaged patients are studied with neuropsychological procedures to determine how certain lesion sites are related to certain cognitive and behavioral deficits; and (2) functional imaging, including PET and fMRI, in which the brain activation in normal subjects is measured while the subjects are performing various tasks. My research has been continuously and fully funded for three decades. I have about a thousand square feet of laboratory space in the Department of Neurology in the University of Iowa Hospitals.

Natalie Denburg, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor of Neurology and Neuroscience at the University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine. Her research interests involve the neural basis of decision-making abilities in older adults; consumer, medical and financial decision making; neuroepidemiology; social and affective neuroscience; and cancer survivorship.

Matthew Rizzo, MD, directs the University of Iowa (UI) Aging Mind and Brain Initiative. He is a professor of Neurology, and holds appointments in the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering and the Public Policy Center at the UI. In Neurology he is Vice-Chair for Translational and Clinical Research, Director of the Division of Neuroergonomics and its laboratories (including state-of-the-art driving simulators and instrumented vehicles), a senior member of the Division of Behavioral Neurology and Cognitive Neuroscience, and a senior attending physician in the Memory Disorders Clinic. He is a graduate of Columbia University in New York City and the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. He has participated in many professional organizations and committees, including the US Federal Drug Administration’s Panel for Peripheral and Central Nervous System Drugs and the National Academy of Sciences Board on Human-Systems Integration.

Dr. Milan Sonka is head of the Iowa Institute for Biomedical Imaging (IIBI), which was formed in 2007 as an acknowledgment of a long history of interdisciplinary collaboration at the University of Iowa. The formation of the interdisciplinary institute reflects a strong institutional support to biomedical imaging and image analysis as well as to translational medical research. The IIBI brings together more than 60 faculty members (out of which over 45 hold faculty positions in the Carver College of Medicine, 15 hold faculty positions in the College of Engineering with a primary expertise in biomedical image analysis) and over 60 graduate students and postdoctoral fellows. The mission of IIBI is to foster efficient and cooperative interdisciplinary and cross-college research and discovery in biomedical imaging, and to improve training and education within the broader community at the University of Iowa. The Institute is finding its new home in two stories of a 100,000 sq.ft. University of Iowa Pappajohn Bioengineering Discovery Building that will be completed in June of 2014 – the floor plan and photographs are provided below. The IIBI space in this new building (30,897 sq.ft.) are devoted to human, large, and small animal imaging, image analysis, computational support, visualization, and biostatistical support. The IIBI space in the new building will become a new integrated home for a large number of image analysis projects that are currently ongoing at the University of Iowa and will therefore further enhance close interaction within the University of Iowa biomedical imaging community.

Dr. Laura Ponto, PhD, RPh, Associate Professor, Department of Radiology, is one of the founding faculty members of the University of Iowa Positron Emission Tomography (PET) Imaging Center and is an expert in PET and pharmacoimaging of both humans and small animals. She has extensive experience in the imaging and analysis of brain metabolism ([¹⁸F]fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG)), blood flow (quantitative [¹⁵O]water) and amyloid burden ([¹¹C]PIB and [¹⁸F]florbetapir) studies and tracer kinetic modeling.