Alex Fischbach is a sixth-year PhD candidate working in the Neuroscience Precision Research & Idiographic Statistical Methods (NeuroPRISM) Lab, led by Dr. Stephanie Noble (Departments of Psychology & Bioengineering) in the Institute for Cognitive and Brain Health at Northeastern. Alex’s research focuses on measurement precision and data-driven method development for functional brain imaging (fMRI).
Alex graduated from Providence College (PC) in 2017 with dual B.A. degrees in Psychology and Biology and a certificate in Neuroscience. During her undergraduate training, she conducted research at both PC and Brown University, investigating the neurobiological, environmental, and genetic antecedents of Body Dysmorphic Disorder and disorders of anxiety and fear.
She earned her M.S. (2020–2023) while working with Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett and Dr. Karen Quigley in the Interdisciplinary Affective Science Lab, where her research examined how brainstem and subcortical structures, traditionally associated with ‘fight-or-flight’ responses, support everyday cognitive functions such as working memory in the absence of threat.
In the NeuroPRISM Lab, Alex is developing a scalable, Python-based artifact correction pipeline for ultra-high-resolution imaging (7T) designed to identify and remove local physiological noise in deep brain regions, thereby enabling more precise and reliable estimates of neural activity in the subcortex.