Postdoctoral Research Scholar · Mallinckrodt Institute of Radiology · Washington University School of Medicine

Bryan
Madero

I study white matter integrity and cerebral biomarkers of brain aging using PET and MRI. My core postdoctoral project frames dynamic [¹¹C]PiB PET as a marker of white matter integrity and amyloid burden. My PhD research examined how structural brain organization relates to cognitive control and large-scale network organization in older adults.

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About
  • InstitutionWashington University School of Medicine
  • DepartmentMallinckrodt Institute of Radiology
  • PIsBrian Gordon, PhD & Manu Goyal, MD
  • ProgramNIH T32 Trainee (TIRS)
  • BeganJuly 2026
Education & Training
  • Postdoctoral Research Scholar
    Washington University School of Medicine
    2026–present
  • Ph.D., Psychology
    University of Iowa
    2026
  • M.A., Psychology
    University of Iowa
    2022
  • B.A., Psychology
    UC Riverside
    2019
Tools & Methods
fMRIPrepXCP-DFSLFreeSurferR / lme4PythonMATLABBash

White Matter Integrity & PET/MRI Biomarkers of Brain Aging

I am a Postdoctoral Research Scholar in the Mallinckrodt Institute of Radiology at Washington University School of Medicine, working with Brian Gordon and Manu Goyal. My core postdoctoral project frames dynamic [¹¹C]PiB PET as a marker of white matter integrity and amyloid burden in the aging brain.

My PhD dissertation investigated how the morphology of the posterior middle frontal sulci (pmfs) -- a subtle but functionally important cortical landmark -- relates to executive function and the spatial boundaries of large-scale resting-state networks in older adults. That work drew on the EXTEND dataset and combined structural neuroimaging, task-based fMRI, resting-state network analysis, and behavioral cognitive testing. Before graduate school, I worked as an EMT, primarily with older adults -- an experience that has given enduring human grounding to questions I now pursue statistically.


PhD Dissertation Aims
  • 01

    Task-switching performance & working memory maintenance

    Characterizing task-switch costs and working memory maintenance in older adults using overlapping feature conditions. This aim establishes the behavioral substrate that subsequent structural and connectivity analyses are designed to explain.

  • 02

    pmfs morphology & task-switch performance

    Testing whether sulcal morphology of the pmfs -- indexed via MFCratio (primary) and sulcal bin classification (validation) -- predicts task-switch performance in older adults, asking whether a structural feature of prefrontal cortex independently accounts for individual differences in cognitive control.

  • 03

    pmfs morphology & functional network spatial organization

    Examining how pmfs morphology relates to the spatial boundaries and fingerprint characteristics of association networks at rest -- using group ICA, dual regression, and custom Dice-based connectivity fingerprinting to link cortical structure to network topology.

Publications

Research Output

Full record on ORCID.

Peer-Reviewed
Under Review

Presentations

Talks & Posters


Awards & Funding
Curriculum Vitae

Full Academic CV

Complete record of publications, presentations, teaching, and funding history.

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About Me

Beyond the Lab

Outside of research I build things, stay active, and find ways to apply the same systematic thinking from my science to completely different problems.


Side Projects
In Dev

Studio Scheduler

A constraint-based scheduling app for competitive dance studios. Built to solve a real problem -- scheduling 200+ classes, rooms, and instructors by hand was taking weeks. This does it in seconds.

JavaScriptConstraint SolverHTML
Active

BiblioMate

A personal research library tool for organizing large citation libraries. Features D3 topic cluster visualizations, keyword co-occurrence networks, and a local LLM similarity pipeline.

ReactD3ViteLLM

Life Outside Science

Photo collage coming soon -- conferences, travel, and everything in between.

Contact

Get in touch

I welcome correspondence about research collaborations or questions about my work.

madero.bryan01@gmail.com

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