People
Dr. Jillian Hardee (PhD) | Principal Investigator
Email: jhardee@med.umich.edu
Jillian E. Hardee, PhD, is a Research Assistant Professor within the Department of Psychiatry and an Adjunct Lecturer within the Department of Psychology. She obtained her BS in Biology and PhD in Neuroscience from West Virginia University. She has over 19 years of experience using structural and functional neuroimaging in healthy and at-risk child, adolescent, and adult samples.
Her doctoral work, under the mentorship of Dr. Aina Puce, examined whether different features of emotional faces are more threatening or salient to the human amygdala. She then joined the lab of Dr. Koraly Perez-Edgar at George Mason University to conduct her postdoctoral training, also working in conjunction with the University of Maryland and NIMH.
In 2012, Dr. Hardee came to the University of Michigan to conduct additional postdoctoral training in Dr. Mary Heitzeg's lab in the Department of Psychiatry. Here she used fMRI to investigate the neurobiological and behavioral comorbidities of addiction, specifically longitudinal changes across development, in emotion processing and inhibitory control circuitry in children and adolescents with a family history of alcohol use disorders. Dr. Hardee has been a faculty member since 2016.
Dr. Hardee is a member of the Eisenberg Family Depression Center, the Neuroscience Graduate Program, and the Michigan Neuroscience Institute.
For more information, see Dr. Hardee's page on Michigan Experts.
Graduate Students
Savannah Pearson (BS) | Neuroscience Graduate Student
Email: spearso@med.umich.edu
Savannah received her B.S. in Biological Sciences with a minor in Psychology from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC). Savannah joined the Program in Biomedical Sciences at the University of Michigan and matriculated into the Neuroscience Graduate Program in the fall of 2024. Her research interests include neurobiological and psychosocial factors that contribute to risk for substance use disorder.
Research Staff
David "DJ" Jacobson (BS) | Research Coordinator
Email: davija@med.umich.edu
DJ graduated from the University of Minnesota in 2024 with a BS in Psychology. They began working for the Hardee Lab in August of 2024 and is from Garrison, Minnesota. Their research primarily focuses on college-aged students, which they hope to continue within the Hardee lab.
Luke Luckey (BS) | Research Assistant
Email: lluckey@umich.edu
Luke graduated from the University of Michigan in 2023 with a BS in Biopsychology, Cognition, and Neuroscience. Luke has been a research assistant for the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study since graduation. He recently joined the Hardee Lab to assist with the Maturing Out study. He is excited to be part of the team researching brain differences in relation to alcohol use. Luke will be a medical student at Centeral Michigan University College of Medicine in August of 2025.
Mary Soules (MS) | fMRI Data Manager
Mary is an Applications Programmer Analyst Senior with over 11 years of experience working in research. She completed her MS in Applied Data Science at the University of Michigan. She has expertise in creating workflows to automate neuroimaging data analysis, developing and maintaining research-related data collection applications, and is fluent in a wide range of coding and scripting languages.
Zac Ekves (PhD) | fMRI Data Manager
Zac is a Research Computer Specialist. He completed his PhD in Psychological Sciences at the University of Connecticut where his research primarily focused on language and memory, with a specific focus on the neural underpinnings of event cognition and episodic memory. He has general skills and interests in the analysis of behavioral and neuroimaging data, along with the application of machine learning and other computational methods for modeling behavior and cognition.
Undergraduates
Calli Landon | Undergraduate Research Assistant
Calli is majoring in Biomolecular Sciences at the University of Michigan. She is from Cheboygan, Michigan.
Alumni
Eliza Alushi | undergraduate honors student (2023-2024)
Brittany Bostrum | postbac research assistant (2017-2018)
Mairead Cain | undergraduate (2023) and postbac research assistant (2023-2024)
Class of 2028, Penn State College of Medicine
Jackson Dabagia | undergraduate (2023)
Bailey Ferris | undergraduate honors student (2016-2017)
Tabatha Hart | postbac research assistant (2019-2020)
Marie Jung | postbac research assistant (2021-2023)
Elizabeth Kruse | undergraduate honors student (2018-2019)
Clinical psychology doctoral student in the Social Cognition & Psychopathology Lab at the University of Rochester
Claire Novak | undergraduate (2018-2019)
Ellen O'Conor | postbac research assistant (2018-2019)
Camille Phaneuf | undergraduate honors student (2018-2019)
Psychology doctoral student in the Affective Neuroscience and Development Lab at Harvard University
Deepa Raghavan | undergraduate (2019-2020)
Rachel Ritter | undergraduate honors student (2021)
Shawana Shaikh | undergraduate (2019-2020)
Sophie Yagoda | undergraduate (2021)