CPIN Distinguished Doctoral Award in Neuroscience

2020 CPIN Distinguished Doctoral Award in Neuroscience Recipient: Gavin Elias

On behalf of the Collaborative Program in Neuroscience (CPIN) 2020 Award Committee, CPIN is pleased to announce Gavin Elias (Institute of Medical Science, Dr. Andres Lozano lab) as this year's recipient of the CPIN Distinguished Doctoral Award.
Congratulations Gavin!
This award has been established as of 2020 to recognize the accomplishments of outstanding CPIN graduate students from the 16
CPIN participating graduate departments at 7 U of T faculties. Following a highly competitive review process, Gavin stood out due to his exceptional accomplishments and was selected as the 2020 CPIN Distinguished Doctoral Award recipient. He was presented with the award at the 2020 Virtual CPIN Research Day on December 18.
Gavin Elias is completing his PhD in the Institute of Medical Science as part of his training in U of T's MD/PhD program. He has published 52 peer-reviewed articles (9 as first author), with several more currently under review. He has also presented at international conferences and has
won federal award funding (CIHR CGS D) for his research.
Gavin's work focuses on the use of neuroimaging tools like magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to investigate correlates and predictors of response to functional neurosurgical procedures - particularly deep brain stimulation (DBS). In recent publications, he has used MRI-based probabilistic mapping techniques to characterize 'hotspots' of efficacious DBS treatment for various conditions. He has complemented this approach with 'big data' connectomics, drawing on publicly available functional and diffusion-weighted MRI databases in order to explore patterns of brain-wide
network engagement in DBS patient populations. Gavin's most recent work has centred on DBS for treatment-resistant depression, involving the study of pre-operative brain volume and glucose metabolism markers of eventual clinical response as well as novel functional MRI experiments to understand how DBS acutely changes brain activity.
Gavin would like to acknowledge the mentorship of his supervisor, Dr.Andres Lozano, as well as the support of his close collaborators and
colleagues, Alexandre Boutet, Jürgen Germann, and Aaron Loh.