Worksite Spotlight: Creating Neurological Clinical Profiles at the UNC Neurocognitive and Imaging Research Lab

Hello everyone! My name is Richie Gray, and I am the Gil Internship Manager for the Fall 2026 Gil cohort. I had the pleasure of visiting the UNC Neurocognition and Imaging Research Lab (UNC NIRL) recently during the Fall 2026 semester. UNC NIRL is a research lab a part of the UNC Psychiatry Department, dedicated to exploring the brain’s structural and functional characteristics that lead to healthy cognitive emotional development and contribute to onset and severity of neuropsychiatric and neurodevelopmental disabilities. UNC NIRL is a multidisciplinary research lab that heavily combines subject material related to many of our program areas including: B&I Neuroscience, Quantitative, Clinical, and Developmental Psychology. They utilize multimodal neuroimaging techniques (MRI, fMRI, EEG) along with other physiological (EDA) and behavioral data collection technology. 

UNC NIRL is located on UNC’s medical campus in Medical School Wing D (near Campus Health). The lab is run by Dr. Aysenil Belger, along with several full time postdocs, lab managers, and research assistants. This is a massive lab conducting a wide range of research! Once I arrived, I was greeted by two of UNC NIRL’s clinical research assistants, Moya Chu and Idil Baran, and our Gil intern, Mikhail (Misha) Grdzelishvili, who is interning there this semester. I started off my visit first by meeting with Misha to discuss his role and responsibilities. 

Misha is involved in a variety of different research projects at UNC NIRL. He first detailed his weekly responsibilities, which included weekly lab meetings to discuss lab updates/research progress, facilitating in-person clinical data collection with participants, and shadowing neuroimaging visits. Outside these weekly responsibilities, Misha described being involved with several research projects at the lab, most notably a study called PASS. PASS aims to examine the relationship between amygdala activation and responses to emotional faces in anxious children. Misha described the data collection process and analysis through EDA technology, something he helps to facilitate. 

Uniquely, UNC NIRL’s internship experience heavily focuses on interns completing their own research project while they help out with other ongoing projects. Misha is working on a subproject of a main lab study called COGNIT. Misha is investigating the associations between hippocampal and amygdala structure and poly-victimization in adolescents. Poly-victimization can be described as adverse life events, like the loss of a loved one. Looking into these structural changes can inform us of how traumatic life experiences can influence the very structure of our neuroanatomy. Misha hopes to in the future present his work at the Celebration of Undergraduate Research! 

After graduation, Misha plans to apply for clinical research coordinator or lab manager positions as he continues his journey in research. He plans to apply to clinical psychology PhD programs in the future, specially focused on researching anxiety treatments, like exposure, in OCD populations and in those who have high anxiety sensitivity.

Misha works a hybrid work schedule, with most of his hours in-person, which offers a unique and rewarding experience. Exposure not only to data collection, but to the analysis of said data is rare for an undergrad; thus this is why UNC NIRL is such a highly regarded worksite! Future Gil interns interested in UNC NIRL as a worksite can expect an enriching hands-on clinical research experience, where an intern will work closely with research participants, help to facilitate data analysis, and even conduct their own research! Furthermore, future interns can expect to receive invaluable advice from a diversified set of professionals, ranging from principal investigators to post-bac research assistants. 

Speaking of research assistants, after I met with Misha, I had the pleasure to talk with Moya and Idil. Both are clinical research assistants at UNC NIRL, in charge of data collection, project management, and mentorship of undergraduates for separate studies. Moya graduated from Taiwan with a degree in psychology and is interested in the brain and clinical symptoms that stem from pathology. She is in charge of the STAARS study, which measures the brain activity of teenagers with anhedonia while in stressful activities. She plans to pursue a masters in biomedical engineering soon. Idil graduated from UNC with a degree in psychology and is interested in the risk/protective factors that contribute to pathologies, such as anxiety, depression, and substance abuse. She is in charge of the PASS study, described previously. She plans to pursue a clinical psychology PhD soon.

They both provided me with a detailed overview of the lab’s goals and research efforts. UNC NIRL is predominantly focused on neuroimaging of a wide array of clinical populations. They study the structural and activation differences across clinical populations to create clinical profiles that distinguish differences in brain function and make-up. These clinical profiles include neurological, behavioral, cognitive, and physiological information, creating a well-rounded image of a specific pathology! Outside of just research, UNC NIRL collaborates with other UNC medical school labs (e.g., UNC NIRAL, another Gil worksite), other universities (e.g., NC State), and interestingly, high schools. UNC NIRL offers high school students an opportunity to tour the lab and conduct their own mini-research projects.  

I was extremely impressed not only by the work Misha has done, but by the overall research conducted at UNC NIRL and how Misha helps to contribute to that. We thank Dr. Belger, Moya, Idil, and other staff at UNC NIRL for mentoring and supporting Misha. The Gil team is proud to have such a long-standing partnership with the lab (11 years long!), and we hope future Gil interns can further contribute to this amazing worksite, just as Misha and so many other former Gil interns have done.