The Computational and Advanced Neuroimaging of brain DYnamics (CANDY) Lab is directed by Dr. Jingyuan Chen, and affiliated with the Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School.
Our research program lies at the interface of biomedical engineering, signal processing, and neuroscience. We advance neuroimaging techniques (with an emphasis on functional PET-MRI and ultra-high-field fMRI) and computational approaches to study the biophysical and molecular mechanisms underlying intrinsic brain activity, and the neurobiological consequences enacted by cognition, arousal, and disease.
September 2025
🦒🦒 Sara will join the lab as a research fellow, supported by an NIH T32 training grant! She is a clinical psychologist, with PhD training at University of Alabama at Birmingham and postdoctoral training at Medical University of South Carolina.
August 2025
💰💰 Jingyuan was selected as an MGH Research Fellow funded by the Rappaport Foundation!
🦒🦒 We hosted two high school interns, Olivia and Hana, from the Martinos Center Summer Internship program, and they successfully presented their research experience at Science on Tap.
June 2025
🎤 We are heading to Brisbane for OHBM 2025! Shirley will present her work on metabolic signatures of complex network metrics; Jingyuan will give a symposium talk on the EEG-PET-MRI sleep study.
🥳 Sean graduated from the John Martinson Honors Program at Northeastern University! Congrats!
January 2025
🥳 Shirley’s abstract is accepted at OHBM and Brain and Brain PET! Congrats!
June 2024
🎤 We are heading to Seoul for OHBM 2024! Penghui will present his work on cortical parcellations of metabolic connectivity.
May 2024
🎤 We are heading to Montreal for NRM 2024! Sean will give an oral presentation on time-resolved fPET-fMRI fusion.
February 2024
🦒🦒 Emma will join the lab as a high-school intern this summer! She is a student from Bronxville High School.
January 2024
🥳 Both Sean and Penghui’s abstracts are accepted by OHBM! Sean’s abstract is also accepted by ISMRM and he also received a travel stipend!
Sean’s abstract is accepted as an oral presentation by NRM! Congrats!
November 2023
💰💰 We are grateful to the NIH NIMH R21 award for funding our research! We will apply functional PET-MRI to probe the mechanisms underlying fMRI deactivations in cognitive tasks.
October 2023
🦒🦒 Xiao joined the lab as a visiting undergraduate research assistant! She is a junior undergraduate student at Tsinghua University, majoring in Biomedical Engineering.
🥳 Dakota gave a talk on characterizing fMRI signatures of systemic physiology in healthy aging at Human Connectome Project (HCP)/Adult Aging Brain Connectome (AABC) Data Symposium
📖 Dakota, Shirley, and Penghui attended the Martinos Center laminar fMRI short course!
July 2023
🎤 We are heading to Montreal for OHBM 2023! Dakota will present her work on 7T white-matter fMRI and the fMRI signatures of systemic physiology in aging; Sean will present his work on functional PET analysis; and Jingyuan will give an educational talk and a symposium talk.
June 2023
🥳 Shirley graduated from University of California, San Diego! Congrats!
🎤 We are heading to Toronto for ISMRM 2023! Dakota will present her 7T white matter fMRI work.
May 2023
🥳 Dakota graduated from NYU. Congrats! She will join the lab as a research technician II this summer.
🦒🦒 Shirley will join the lab as a lab manager/research assistant this summer! She is finishing her undergraduate degree at UCSD.
🦒🦒 Zihad will join the lab as a research assistant this summer! He is an undergraduate student at Northeastern University, majoring in bioengineering and biochemistry.
April 2023
💰💰 We are grateful to the BrightFocus Foundation for funding our research! We will apply simultaneous EEG-PET-MRI to study the mechanisms of Alzheimer’s disease.
Mar 2023
🦒🦒 Penghui will join the lab as a visiting student this summer! He is a junior at the Southern University of Science and Technology in China, majoring in Intelligent Medical Engineering.
🥳 Both Sean and Dakota’s abstracts are accepted by OHBM! Dakota’s abstract is also selected for an oral presentation. Congrats!
Feb 2023
🥳 Dakota’s abstract is accepted by ISMRM! She also receives the trainee travel stipend. Congrats!
Jan 2023
Aloha! The CANDY lab has arrived!
💰💰 We are grateful to the NIH NINDS R00 award for funding our research! We will advance a functional PET-MRI framework to characterize the metabolic signatures of functional network behaviors across different arousal and cognitive states.
💰💰 We are also grateful to the Harvard Mind Brain Behavior Faculty Research Award and the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation Young Investigator Grant for funding our research! We will apply simultaneous EEG-PET-MRI to study the mechanisms of cognitive deficits in Schizophrenia.