graduate students

Seyed successfully defended his PhD dissertation, “Corticomuscular adaptation to mechanical perturbations in a seated locomotor task.” He is the first Dr. from the lab. He will be leaving us to start a new postdoc at NYU in May! Congrats, Dr. Shirazi! 

Lietsel Richardson has been helping to promote Black excellence in neuroscience as one of the 23 organizers of the massively successful inaugural #BlackInNeuroWeek, July 27-Aug 2. Lietsel was part of the Black In Neuro committees that planned the #BlackNeuroMentors and #BlackNeuroArt days for Black In Neuro Week. She played a role in inviting speakers, planning meetings, moderating online events, and managing social media campaigns. Lietsel also hosted the Q&A session on #BlackNeuroArt with a PhD student/filmmaker of the award-winning short film, Godspeed.

Black In Neuro Week had over 2,000 registrants and attendees for their events and almost had a complete takeover of Science Twitter for the week with #BlackInNeuro content. Black In Neuro has also received nearly $100k in sponsorships from various scientific institutes and universities and had their story featured in USA Today, Forbes, and Medium. After paying all of their speakers, Black In Neuro had raised enough funding to become an organization and will host more events and programs in the future. 

Lietsel’s long-term role with the organization Black In Neuro is as Project Manager. She will track all of their future projects and initiatives for their team as a whole.

We are so proud of Lietsel!! She has the full support and commitment of her fellow BRaINUTs to do our part to promote Black excellence in neuromechanics and all other neuro-related fields.