The Shah Laboratory aims to identify mechanisms underlying cognitive recovery following adult and pediatric brain injury. The lab conducts clinical translational studies in both adult and pediatric brain injury, employing clinically feasible neurophysiological tools—the electroencephalogram (EEG) and transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS)—alongside state-of-the-art neuroimaging tools (magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and positron emission tomography (PET) ligand studies. The lab has identified novel biomarkers of altered executive function after traumatic brain injury (TBI) in adults and in recovery from coma in pediatric subjects. Impaired integrative brain functions, particularly within the cognitive domains, such as the impaired ability to perceive, plan, reason, and remember, are the most common and debilitating consequences of brain injury. Despite the tremendous acute and chronic impact of cognitive impairments post-injury, efforts to accurately diagnose, sensitively prognosticate, and track therapeutic interventions remain limited.
Associated Lab Members
Sudhin Shah, Ph.D., is an assistant professor of neuroscience in the department of radiology within the Brain Health and Imaging Institute at Weill Cornell Medicine (WCM). She received her B.Sc. in electrical engineering from Drexel University followed by a M.Sc. in biomedical engineering from Columbia University. She received her Ph.D. in systems neuroscience from the Weill Cornell Graduate School of Medical Sciences at Cornell University. She completed her postdoctoral training at WCM as well. Dr. Shah is also the Scientific Director of cognitive recovery research at Blythedale Children’s Hospital. She is an affiliate faculty member with the Consortium for the Advanced Study of Brain Injury at WCM. She has served on several National Institutes of Health scientific review panels, and as an invited reviewer for several journals. She has also served as a research mentor for more than 10 medical and graduate students.
Ludvik Alkhoury is a postdoctoral associate of radiology at Weill Cornell Medicine. He received a B.S. in electrical engineering from the University of Balamand (UOB), Lebanon. He then joined the Data Fusion Lab (directed by Professor Moshe Kam) at the New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) in 2018. In 2023, he received a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the Helen and John C. Hartmann Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at NJIT. His doctoral research focused on wearable health monitoring sensors and methods to extract non-invasive high quality vital signs (such as heart rate and oxygen saturation) during extensive human motion. He is currently working in Dr. Sudhin Shah’s laboratory to study the brain's response to language in children with brain injuries.
Abby is a clinical research coordinator at Weill Cornell Medicine. She received a B.S. in cognitive and behavioral neuroscience from Villanova University. During her undergraduate experience, she conducted research concerning language variation and cognitive processing strategies, striving to expand the literature on underrepresented groups. Abby is currently working in Dr. Sudhin Shah’s laboratory as a research coordinator. She assists with electroencephalography (EEG) focused studies investigating both pediatric disorders of consciousness and impairments in attention following traumatic brain injury in adults.
Giacomo Scanavini is a postdoctoral associate in radiology at Weill Cornell Medicine. He holds a Ph.D. in physics from Yale University with a focus on high-energy physics. During his academic journey, he conducted research on neutrino properties, utilizing Liquid Argon Time Projection Chambers (LArTPCs) at Fermi National Laboratory (Fermilab). Currently, Giacomo works in Dr. Shah's laboratory, where he is investigating disorders of consciousness among individuals ranging from young children to adolescents with the goal of developing brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) to enhance essential daily tasks, such as communication.
Nicholas D. Schiff, M.D.
Amy Kuceyeski, Ph.D.
Tracy Butler, M.D.
Susan A. Gauthier, D.O.
Chani Traube, M.D.
Abhishek Jaywant, Ph.D.
Jonathan Lee Baker, Ph.D.
N. Jeremy Hill, D.Phil.
Peter Brunner, Ph.D.
Stacy Suskauer, M.D.
Nayoung Kim, Research Scientist (Columbia University)
Jacob Garetti, Medical Student (Yale University)
Award or grant: NIH/NINDS: 1R01NS102646-01A1
This is a multi-center collaborative grant (Weill Cornell Medicine, Mount Sinai) that aims to carry out a longitudinal study of the mechanisms underlying executive attention impairment...
Award or Grant: National Institutes of Health (NIH)/Brain Research Through Advancing Innovative Nanotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative
This is a multi-center collaborative grant (Weill Cornell Medicine, Stanford University, Harvard University/...
Recognizing the specific and unmet global need for expanding research in pediatric brain injury outcomes, Dr. Shah has co-directed (with Dr. Stacy Suskauer) the creation of the Pediatric Brain Injury Consortium since 2019 (eight...
Acquired brain injury is a leading cause of death and disability among children and adolescents, and cognitive impairment is the most persistent and distressing sequela. For children with co-occurring impairment of oromotor, oculomotor, gross and fine motor function, assessment of...
The overall objective of this project is to determine the functional integrity of the anterior forebrain mesocircuit (medial frontal cortex, striatum and central thalamus) using a novel tool [11C] flumazenil (FMZ). FMZ binding in the brain reports both neuronal...
