Curriculum Vitae · Ali Rahimpour Jounghani

Appointments

2026 – present

Research Scientist (part-time)

Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences, Stanford University School of Medicine

C-Brain Lab (PI: S. M. Hadi Hosseini, Ph.D.)
2026 – present

Co-Founder & Chief Scientific Officer

Walnot Inc

Principal Investigator, NIH STTR Phase I (R41) award to develop a wearable fNIRS platform for precision psychiatry.
2022 – 2025

Postdoctoral Scholar

Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences, Stanford University School of Medicine

NIH T32 Postdoctoral Fellow, Center for Interdisciplinary Brain Sciences Research (2024 – 2025). C-Brain Lab; mentor: S. M. Hadi Hosseini, Ph.D.
2017 – 2022

Graduate Student Researcher

Department of Psychological Sciences, University of California, Merced

EEG and fNIRS studies of rhythm perception, action-based timing, and auditory–motor network interaction (advisor: Heather Bortfeld).
2016 – 2017

R&D Biomedical Engineer

NR Sign Inc., Tehran, Iran

fNIRS hardware testing and data processing, pain-transmission research, neuromuscular electrical stimulation protocols, EOG experiment design.

Education

2017 – 2022

Ph.D., Psychological Sciences

University of California, Merced

Dissertation: The effect of contextually specific, action-based timing behavior on brain responses. Committee: Heather Bortfeld (Chair), Rose Scott, Ramesh Balasubramaniam, Elif Isbell.
2021

M.S., Quantitative Methods (Quantitative Psychology)

University of California, Merced
2013 – 2016

M.S., Biomedical Engineering

University of Tehran, Iran

Thesis: fNIRS for infant cerebral hemodynamic monitoring. Advisors: Hossein Ahmadi Noubari and Seyed Kamaledin Setarehdan.
2008 – 2012

B.S., Biomedical Engineering

Sahand University of Technology, Tabriz, Iran

Grants & fellowships

2025
Principal Investigator, NIH Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) Phase I Award (R41), Walnot Inc — wearable fNIRS platform for precision psychiatry in children with ADHD
2024 – 2025
NIH T32 Postdoctoral Fellowship, Center for Interdisciplinary Brain Sciences Research, Stanford University School of Medicine
2021
Hatano Cognitive Development Research Fellowship, UC Merced
2020
Developmental Student Research Award, UC Merced
2018 – 2022
Bobcat Research Support Fellowship (summers), UC Merced
2019
Graduate Student Association Travel Grant, UC Merced
2017
Research Grant, Mofid Children’s Hospital, Tehran
2016
Research Grant, Cognitive Sciences and Technologies Council, Iran

Honors & awards

2026
Top Innovator Honoree, Venture Summit West 2026 (youngStartup Ventures) — Walnot Inc
2026
Selected Startup, Ferment 2026, Stanford Biotech Group — Walnot Inc
2025
Outstanding Oral Presentation Award, UK fNIRS Conference, Cambridge, UK
2025
Finalist Pitch Presenter, Stanford Founders Demo Day
2024
Finalist, Wearable Technologies Innovation World Cup
2024
Finalist, Stanford High Impact Technology (HIT) Fund

Publications & presentations

19 published papers and preprints, 5 manuscripts under review, and 20 talks and conference presentations. See Publications and Talks.

Collaborative research projects

2026 – present
Wearable fNIRS in an Alzheimer's disease cohort
Stanford Alzheimer's Disease Research Center (ADRC) — lead analyst
2026 – present
SYSTEMAATICS: Childhood adversity and acute stress
Computational analysis lead and lead of the brain measurement team
2026 – present
fNIRS replication of non-adjacent dependency learning (Lu & Mintz, 2023)
Computational analysis collaboration
2024
Vibrotactile gamma entrainment in amnestic MCI
Stanford Bio-X Seed Grant proposal — lead for EEG and MRI outcome measures
2023 – present
Fraction processing in South African schoolchildren
University of Johannesburg — fNIRS data processing
2021 – 2022
Executive function in pediatric obstructive sleep apnea
University of Maryland School of Medicine
2021 – 2022
Auditory stream segregation in cochlear implant users
Department of Otolaryngology, Keck School of Medicine, USC

Software

in development
Precision Wearable (MATLAB) — Lead Developer
Open toolbox for dense-sampling analysis of wearable fNIRS and EEG: graphical end-to-end pipeline, quality metrics, motion correction, AR-IRLS first-level models, and intensive-longitudinal methods.
2017 – present
NIRS Toolbox (MATLAB) — Contributor
Beta testing, troubleshooting, and development of an open-source toolbox for fNIRS analysis.

Professional service

Editorial

Editorial Board Member, Heliyon (Cell Press), 2024 – present
Guest Editor, Special Issue, Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 2023
Guest Editor, Special Issue, Behavioural Brain Research, 2023
Associate Editor, Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 2021

Ad hoc reviewer

Artificial Intelligence Review; Biomedical Engineering: Applications, Basis and Communications; Cerebral Cortex; Computer Methods and Programs in Biomedicine; Cortex; Frontiers in Human Neuroscience; Hearing Research; Heliyon; IEEE Access; IEEE Transactions on Neural Systems and Rehabilitation Engineering; Imaging Neuroscience; Infant Behavior and Development; Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience; Journal of Neural Engineering; Journal of Neuroimaging; Medical & Biological Engineering & Computing; Medical Hypotheses; NeuroImage; PNAS; Scientific Reports; Sensors.

Other

Organizer and Lead, Weekly Journal Club, Division of Interdisciplinary Brain Sciences, Stanford Medicine, 2025 – present
Organizing Committee Member and Session Chair, “fNIRS in Neurodevelopment Research” and “fNIRS Standards” sessions, SfNIRS 2021
Grant Reviewer, Research Project Grant, Leverhulme Trust (UK), 2019
Abstract Reviewer: Stanford MCHRI Symposium (2023), APS Annual Convention (2023), SfNIRS Conference (2021)
Graduate Student Organizer, Developmental Psychology Colloquium Series, UC Merced, 2020

Teaching & mentoring

Instructor, workshop on MATLAB programming and analysis of longitudinal, dense-sampled neuroimaging time series — Division of Interdisciplinary Brain Sciences, Stanford Medicine (2026)
Guest Lecturer, PSYC 250: Neuroimaging Research Methods — Stanford University (annually, 2023 – 2026)
Guest Lecturer, Summer SERI Talk Series and TechX Summer Camp — Stanford University (2023 – 2026)
Teaching Fellow, Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience; Industrial/Organizational Psychology — UC Merced (2021)
Teaching Assistant, Cognitive Psychology; Physiological Psychology; Cognitive Development; Clinical Neuropsychology; Alcohol, Drugs & Behavior — UC Merced (2017 – 2022)
Teaching Assistant, Statistical Pattern Recognition; Biomedical Instrumentation — University of Tehran (2015); Control Systems, Electronics, Engineering Mathematics — Sahand University of Technology (2010 – 2012)

Since 2019 I have mentored undergraduates, graduate students, research staff, and early-career researchers at Stanford, UC Berkeley, Duke, USC, and UC Merced in fNIRS study design, data acquisition, and analysis, and served as second reader for an undergraduate thesis. As a research mentor with CMP Academy (2024 – present), I mentor high school students in neuroscience and cognitive science; mentees have since been admitted to universities including Emory, UCLA, USC, and Yale.

Mentored student publications

Georgieva, V. (2025). The use of portable functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) to study brain function in real-world sports environments. Exploratio Journal.
Volvovsky, E. (2025). Portable fNIRS in sports: Measuring brain function in real-world settings. Exploratio Journal.

Translational & entrepreneurship

StartX Accelerator (Stanford-affiliated) — Walnot Inc; StartX founder and alumnus, 2026
Stanford Graduate School of Business Startup Garage (completed), 2025
Stanford Venture Studio — featured project on neurofeedback, 2025
NSF Innovation Corps (I-Corps), UC Berkeley — selected proposal, 2020