Dr. Ayan Mitra received his PhD from the University of South Carolina with a focus on Neuroscience, Electroencephalography (EEG), and Education and completed a dual postdoctoral training at the University of Connecticut and University of California San Francisco’s BrainLENS Laboratory with a focus on multimodal neuroimaging and neurodevelopmental disorders prior to entering the healthcare industry. He has extensive experience in clinical research operations and project management, most recently serving as a Clinical Research Manager & Scientist at Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. In his current leadership role, he provides essential administrative and strategic support for medical research projects on Sleep, Epilepsy, and Alzheimer’s disease and his office manages regulatory requirements for multiple institutional and external stakeholders including the Clinical Trials Office, Technology Ventures Office, and Sponsored Programs Contracting and industry pharmaceutical and biotech sponsors.
Dr. Mitra came to Harvard Medical School in 2024 after several years of experience in academic and industry roles where he demonstrated excellence in project management, clinical research operations, and scientific roles. He has led research teams across various institutions and therapeutic areas with particular focus on neuroscience. His work focuses on streamlining clinical trial processes, optimizing operational efficiency, and developing comprehensive documentation systems that ensure regulatory compliance and acceleration of research timelines while working on retrospective, emulated, and clinical trials at the intersection of Neurology and Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning.

Dr. Floortje van de Poll completed her Bachelor and Masters degree in Biomedical Sciences in the Netherlands. She then worked as a Clinical a Scientist at the Spanish National Cancer Research Institute, studying prostate cancer in preclinical and clinical settings. From 2017-2022 she was at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center where she completed a PhD in biochemistry. Currently, she works as a Clinical Trial Manager (CTM) at Medpace. The qualities (l)earned during her academic career have proven invaluable for this role, including her versatility, multitasking and project management skills. As CTM she has worked on phase I-IV clinical trials in Hematology, Oncology and Cardiovascular diseases with a wide variety of investigational products. 

Dr. Natalia Do Couto earned her PhD in Cell Biology from Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Brazil, in 2020, with a year of her doctoral studies conducted at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland. She completed postdoctoral training at the University of Illinois Chicago, working within both the College of Medicine and the College of Applied Health Sciences. Currently, she serves as a Clinical Trial Site Manager as part of her postdoctoral training overseeing two sites of a multidisciplinary cardio-oncology clinical trial. In this role, she leads all operational aspects of the study and manages everything from protocol development to personnel training and collaboration with medical professionals. Her experience spans research coordination, strategic project management, and team leadership. She is also passionate about mentoring and career development, having led initiatives as President of the UIC Postdoctoral Association in 2022 and 2023, and currently as program coordinator for the Your Future In Science Seminar Series at UIC.