Principal Investigator
Mo Sendi, PhD
Mo is an Assistant Neuroscientist at McLean Hospital and an Instructor in Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. He leads the SENDI Lab, where his research integrates neuroimaging, EEG, genetics, wearable technologies, and artificial intelligence to advance computational neuroscience and precision psychiatry. His work focuses on understanding individual differences in brain function, identifying multimodal biomarkers of psychiatric and neurological conditions, and predicting treatment outcomes. His long-term goal is to translate advances in neuroscience and machine learning into personalized approaches for diagnosis, treatment selection, and monitoring of mental health conditions.
Postdoctoral Fellows
Giuseppe Varone, PhD
Giuseppe received a Master of Bioengineering in 2017 and his Ph.D. degree in Biomarkers of Chronic and Complex Diseases in 2021 from the University Magna Graecia of Catanzaro, Italy. He is currently a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at McLean Hospital, Harvard Medical School. His research focuses on investigating the neurophysiological mechanisms underlying brain stimulation, neuroplasticity, and cognitive-motor function through computational neuroscience, artificial intelligence, biomedical signal processing, and multimodal neuroimaging analysis of resting-state and task-evoked brain activity. His work aims to advance precision medicine by integrating electrophysiological biomarkers with online neuroimaging to personalize the therapeutic effect of neuromodulation in psychiatric populations.
Matthew Gunn, PhD
Matthew is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at McLean Hospital and Harvard Medical School. Grounded in cognitive and affective psychological science, his research examines how individual differences in attention, reward processing, emotion, and cognitive control contribute to addiction, depression, and anxiety. He integrates EEG, fMRI, behavioral, genetic, and clinical data using advanced quantitative methods, machine learning, and explainable artificial intelligence to study salience, reward, and executive-control networks.
Dr. Gunn is particularly interested in moving beyond group-level biomarkers by developing evolving, person-specific models that distinguish stable individual characteristics from dynamic cognitive and affective states. His overarching goal is to advance predictive and precision mental health through reproducible models of clinical risk, symptom progression, treatment response, and recovery.
Clinical Research Assistants
Nicola Sharp, SM
Nicola is a Clinical Research Assistant who specializes in the conduction and implementation of EEG experiments, including regulatory compliance and computational analysis of multiomic data. Her current project looks at whether we can use EEG to predict treatment response in people with PTSD. During her time as an undergraduate at the University of Oxford, her research project used unsupervised machine learning to identify astrocyte subphenotypes and find links with genetic risk of Alzheimer disease. She later graduated from Harvard Medical School with a Master of Science in Media, Medicine, and Health, where her capstone investigated the experiences of researchers looking at stigmatized healthcare topics, whilst also interning part-time on a McLean study on adult survivors of child sexual abuse. Outside of her research, she has been an avid campaigner against sexual violence, co-chairing the largest student-run sexual violence campaign in England, It Happens Here Oxford. Her goal is to restore autonomy and agency to people who have experienced trauma or neurological disease.
Students and Interns
Eden Tesfaye, MS Candidate
Eden Tesfaye is a graduate student intern at McLean Hospital. She brings a diverse background spanning public service, healthcare policy, and clinical research, with experience leading strategic initiatives across federal, state, and local government.
Prior to joining SENDI Lab, Eden served in leadership roles at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), where she supported initiatives focused on behavioral health, maternal health, suicide prevention, and healthcare access. She also previously worked for the White House, presidential campaigns, and the New York City Mayor's Office.
Passionate about advancing science that improves patient care, Eden is committed to supporting impactful mental health research while preparing for a career in medicine. She is currently a graduate student in the Graduate Medical Sciences program at Boston University Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine, where she is pursuing a Master of Science degree. She earned her bachelor's degree in English and Political Science from Hobart and William Smith Colleges and completed a post-baccalaureate program in biomedical sciences through the University of Texas at Dallas and Dallas College.
Soph Bililies, BS Candidate
Soph Bililies is a neuroscience undergraduate at Brown University (Class of 2027) and a Division I varsity athlete. Her research interests lie at the intersection of cognitive neuroscience, psychiatry, and clinical neuroscience. She has worked on studies examining perceptual learning, cognitive aging, and psychiatric disorders using approaches that include EEG, MRI, behavioral assessment, and clinical data analysis. At McLean Hospital, she contributes to research investigating the neurobiological mechanisms of psychiatric illness and treatment response. She is particularly interested in integrating neuroimaging, electrophysiology, and clinical measures to better understand brain function and advance more precise approaches to mental health care.
Sabadnoor Singh, BS Candidate
Sabadnoor Singh is a research intern at McLean Hospital. His work focuses on sleep and depression, with an emphasis on how static and dynamic brain connectivity relate to sleep duration across depression subtypes.
He works with large-scale UK Biobank resting-state fMRI data and uses MATLAB-based analyses to study brain-behavior relationships. In addition to his work at McLean, Sabadnoor has research experience in computational neuroscience through the Ben-Shalom Lab at UC Davis, where he contributed to neural data analysis pipelines and connectivity method benchmarking. He is interested in the intersection of psychology, neuroscience, and quantitative research, and is especially motivated by projects that use data to better understand mental health and behavior.
He is currently pursuing a Bachelor of Science in Psychology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst
Keemia Ravoz, high school student
Keemia Ravoz is a rising junior at Hopkinton High School and a student intern at SENDI Lab. She is interested in the intersection of artificial intelligence, neuroscience, and human-centered healthcare, particularly technologies that improve the lives of people with neurological and psychiatric conditions.
Previously, Keemia researched at Worcester Polytechnic Institute's RoboCare Lab, where she studied socially assistive robotics for people living with dementia and age-related cognitive disorders. She also developed a proposal adapting these technologies for individuals with Down syndrome and contributed to an NLP and large language model visualization project making AI research more interpretable.
Outside the lab, she has volunteered with the Hopkinton Senior Center and the Michael Lisnow Respite Center, work that shaped her commitment to serving vulnerable populations.
At the Center, she hopes to contribute to mental health research while preparing for a career spanning medicine, neuroscience, and artificial intelligence.