About the team
The DIALOG team is a diverse, global group of scientists, clinicians, computational linguists, and lived-experience experts.
Introducing Our Team
Our work is a collective effort led from the Centre of Excellence in Youth Mental Health, Douglas Research Centre, Canada, and involves 8 internationally recognized interdisciplinary experts in the field of thought, language, communication and 2 experiential experts. Our leadership in neuroimaging, computational modeling, experimental linguistics, and therapeutic trials is united by a commitment to bridge neuroscience with clinical practice in mental health
Our research is guided by people with lived experience of psychosis, including Dr. Oliver Delgaram-Nejad and Hashwin Ganesh, who have shaped our methodology and dissemination efforts from the outset.
Our Team
Principal Investigators:
Palaniyappan’s research program has a broad focus on exploiting neuroscience to inform early interventions for youth in need. Most of his work to date has been on severe mental illnesses such as psychotic disorders, bipolar disorder, and depression. To this end, he takes a pragmatic approach: he uses all accessible tools that are promising (without loyalty to any specific technology) and appreciates the urgency of early intervention in psychiatry.
In his free time, he enjoys reading, travelling, writing poetry (in Tamil), and consuming more coffee than he should.
Sommer is a Professor of Cognitive Aspects of Neurological and Psychiatric Disorders at the University Medical Center Groningen. Her research explores how immune system activity relates to cognitive dysfunction in psychiatric and neurological conditions, with the goal of developing new treatments. She has published over 250 scientific articles and two popular science books, including the national bestseller Haperende Hersenen. Professor Sommer has received multiple prestigious grants and serves as Associate Editor for leading journals such as Schizophrenia Bulletin and Psychological Medicine.
Kuperberg is the Dennett Stibel Professor of Cognitive Science at Tufts University and a Principal Investigator in the Psychiatry Neuroscience Program at Massachusetts General Hospital. Her research uses neuroimaging and computational modeling to understand how the brain constructs meaning from language and how these processes are disrupted in disorders like schizophrenia. She is internationally recognized for her leadership in the neurobiology of language and neuropsychiatry, and her work has been supported by major grants from the NIH, Wellcome Trust, and other foundations.
Bambini is a Full Professor of Linguistics at the IUSS University School for Advanced Studies Pavia, where she coordinates the PhD program in Theoretical and Experimental Linguistics and serves as Vice-Rector for Doctoral Programs. Her research focuses on experimental pragmatics and neuropragmatics, exploring how the brain processes figurative language and implicit meanings, and how these abilities change across the lifespan or are affected in psychiatric and neurological conditions. She leads the ERC Consolidator Grant PROMENADE on the neurocognitive processing of metaphors and directs projects on pragmatic communication in healthy aging and clinical contexts.
Delgaram-Nejad is a linguist and psychological researcher whose work explores the intersection of language, cognition, and human potential. With a PhD in psycholinguistics and a background spanning academia, clinical research, and communication strategy, Oli is interested in how people construct meaning, navigate ambiguity, and shape their professional and personal lives through discourse.
Ganesh is a lived experience expert and researcher with over 10 years of experience in scientific research and development, publishing in areas including electrochemical/optical biosensors, nanotechnology, chemical neuroscience, and stem cells. A futurist at heart, he is passionate about emerging technologies, post-secondary education, youth skill development, immigration, social equity, and the actualization of human potential. He combines his scientific expertise with insights from lived experience to inform innovative approaches to research and community impact.
Harrison is a Professor of Psychiatry and leads the Immunopsychiatry Research Group at Cardiff University. His research explores how the immune system interacts with the brain to influence mood, motivation, and cognition, contributing to conditions such as depression and Alzheimer’s disease. Before joining Cardiff, he founded the UK’s first Clinical Immunopsychiatry Service in Sussex, dedicated to treating inflammation-related depression. He is President-Elect of the Psychoneuroimmunology Research Society and has received research funding from the MRC, Wellcome Trust, and Versus Arthritis.
Kircher is a Professor and Director of the Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy at the University of Marburg. His research focuses on cognitive neuropsychiatry, formal thought disorders, and the neural mechanisms underlying affective and psychotic disorders. He has developed key assessment tools, such as the TALD scale, and led major research initiatives including the DFG-funded FOR2107 “Neurobiology of Affective Disorders.” Professor Kircher is President of the German Society for Biological Psychiatry and has received multiple international awards for his contributions to psychiatry and neuroscience.
Rossell is a Professor, cognitive neuropsychologist and Professorial Research Fellow at Swinburne’s Centre for Mental Health, with an adjunct position at St Vincent’s Health. Her research investigates the cognitive and neurobiological processes underlying psychosis and related disorders. She has published extensively and received international awards for Young Investigator into Schizophrenia Research. Professor Rossell trained at the University of Manchester, King’s College London, and Oxford University, and has held leadership roles at the Mental Health Research Institute of Victoria and Monash Alfred Psychiatry Research Centre.
Singh is a neuroscientist at Cardiff University, working at the interface of methodological development and clinical and cognitive neuroscience. Since 2005, they have contributed to the Cardiff University Brain Research Imaging Centre (CUBRIC), facilitating multimodal neuroimaging research using MRI, MEG, and EEG. Their work spans cognitive and clinical applications, including studies in epilepsy, schizophrenia, and Alzheimer’s disease, with a focus on electrophysiological markers of genetic risk. They also lead efforts to build the UK’s collaborative MEG community, standardizing training, acquisition, and analysis across research sites.
Our Amazing Collaborators
The DIALOG initiative also includes collaborators from various sites:
Alban Voppel, PhD
McGill University
Voppel is a senior postdoctoral researcher in Palaniyappan’s group in Montreal. He brings substantial experience in NLP feature extraction, processing, and statistical modeling and analysis. He will be responsible for designing and coding computational linguistic pipelines, including development and evaluation of metrics.
Erik de Vries, PhD
Groningen University Medical Center
De Vries is a full professor in translational molecular imaging with over 28 years of expertise in PET imaging of neurological and psychiatric diseases. He will coordinate the PET imaging studies with co-applicant Sommer at the UMCG.
Federico Frau, PhD
Scuola Universitaria Superiore IUSS di Pavia
Frau is an assistant professor with a background in neurolinguistics and pragmatics. He will contribute to shaping the co-designed intervention program and the definition of relevant assessment measures centred on social communication.
Frederike Stein, PhD
University of Marburg
Stein is a senior postdoctoral researcher with extensive expertise in large cross-diagnostic MRI datasets. She will assist in compiling and quality control of legacy data, as well as curating and analyzing MRI data and clinical ratings.
Hsi (Tiana) Wei
McGill University
Wei is an early career postdoctoral researcher with expertise in neurolinguistics and MEG analysis. She will assist in speech-related experimental design and oscillatory data analysis to associate MEG signals with language stimuli and speech performance.
Joanne Berry-Frith, MA
Loughborough University
Berry-Frith is a practice-based researcher and visual artist with works in notable collections like the V&A and Arts Council England. She will
assist with the project’s knowledge translation arm, creating visual data montages and art exhibits incorporating lived experience perspectives. She has also previously collaborated with Palaniyappan in an art exhibition.
Sunny X. Tang, MD
Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research and the Donald and Barbara Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell
Tang is a psychiatrist and Researcher specializing in psychosis, language, and social processing, and has collaborated extensively with group members in the past. They will contribute nuanced approaches to data-driven dimensions of disorganisation and social functioning, and will be involved in the dissemination of scoping surveys.
Maria F. Alonso, PhD
Universidad de Valparaíso
Alonso is an early-career researcher, and she will contribute by advising students and postdoctoral researchers in fMRI analysis, focusing on
dynamic causal modeling (DCM) and statistical parametric Bayesian methods.
Marta Bosia, MD, PhD
Vita-Salute San Raffaele University, Milan, Italy
Bosia is an associate Professor and Clinical Psychiatrist with demonstrated expertise in language and psychosis. She will contribute to the design and implementation of the PragmaCom+ remediation program with co-applicant Bambini.
Michael Mackinley, PhD
London Health Sciences Centre, Canada
Mackinley is a senior Research Associate in Palaniyappan’s group in London, Canada, who brings extensive experience in coordinating recruitment for large longitudinal studies in language, functional outcome tracking and neuroimaging in psychosis. He will assist in collecting and analysing social functioning measures.
Milica Miočević, PhD
McGill University
Miočević is a statistical Advisor experienced in mediation analysis and Bayesian statistics for social, health, and behavioural sciences, and will assist/oversee statistical analysis, identifying causes of outcomes among many candidate predictors and WP2 statistical analyses, where large sets of confounders will be modelled using regularization techniques or Bayesian model averaging.
Sylvain Baillet, PhD
Montreal Neurological Institute, McGill University
Baillet is a researcher and Director of the MEG Unit at The Neuro-Montreal, and hewill oversee MEG data collection in Montreal. He will be responsible for MEG task design, data curation, development of project-specific analysis methods, and provide analytical software support and training through the Brainstorm app, which he co-developed.
Philip Tibbo, MD
Dalhousie University
Tibbo is a professor and Clinical Researcher in early intervention for psychosis, and he will create access to longitudinal clinical and speech
data, including imaging data. He will also aid with clinical consensus scores and consultation on cannabis and other substance effects.
Core Staff:
Montreal, Quebec
Ranjini Garani
Project Coordinator
As a project coordinator with a background in neuroimaging, Garani is passionate about bringing people and projects together to move science forward. She thrives on collaboration and love finding creative ways to integrate the arts into scientific work. Accessibility and inclusion are central to her approach and is always looking for ways to make research more open and engaging for everyone.
Nadia
clinical coordinator
As a Clinical Research Coordinator, Nadia bridges the gap between research, project coordination and clinical care. With hands-on experience supporting clinical studies from start to finish, She helps ensure that every step, from recruitment to data collection, runs smoothly, ethically, and with the highest level of quality.
She’s had the chance to work on studies across different therapeutic areas, always with a focus on the well-being of participants. What drives her is the belief that meaningful, well-run research can truly make a difference in people’s lives.
Jessica Ahrens
Graduate Researcher
Ahrens is a PhD student in McGill’s neuroscience program, exploring the dopamine system of individuals with schizophrenia via neuromelanin-MRI. Ahren’s passion for this field comes from her experience of having a loved one with schizophrenia.
Farida Zaher
Graduate Researcher
Etienne Barou-Laforie
Research Assistant
Barou-Laforie is a Research Assistant at the Douglas Mental Health Institute with an interdisciplinary background in neuroscience, cognitive science, psychology, and artificial intelligence. His work emphasizes the importance of prioritizing mental health research and benefits from a cross-disciplinary perspective that bridges experimental, computational, and clinical approaches. Within the DIALOG project, Barou-Laforie applies this skillset to support research at the intersection of cognitive neuroscience and mental health.