Moji Aghajani is Assistant Professor at the Institute of Education and Child Studies, section Forensic Family & Youth care. His research activities largely converge on the societally and scientifically relevant intersection between cognitive neuroscience and developmental/clinical psychology. 

Short CV

After completing his BSc Psychology and Research MSc Clinical Psychology at Leiden University (both Cum Laude), he conducted his doctoral research (PhD) on developmental psychopathology & cognitive neuroscience at the LUMC (Dept. Child & Adolescent Psychiatry). He subsequently obtained a postdoctoral position at the Amsterdam UMC/VU Medical Center (Dept. Psychiatry), focusing primarily on biological psychiatry and emerging neurobiological techniques (e.g., ultra-high field MRI). He was appointed Assistant Professor at Leiden University in September 2020.

Research

Moji’s research mainly revolves around the study of externalizing/internalizing psychopathologies and their neurobiobehavioral underpinnings, using a variety of techniques (e.g., Neuroimaging, Epigenetics, Experimental Psychology). His work has shown how specific changes in cortico-limbic brain circuits, and the oxytocinergic system, may shape socioemotional dysfunction in severely conduct-disordered youth. His research has also contributed to a better understanding of brain system dysfunctions in clinically traumatized and depressed individuals. He has built up a large international network, presented at high-profile international conferences, and received various awards/fellowships based on his work. He is a strong advocate of open and reproducible science, and as such co-chair/co-founder of two workgroups (Antisocial Behavior & Panic Disorder) within the ENIGMA consortium (~350 sites worldwide), wherein neurobehavioral data from individual sites are shared and used for robust mega-analyses.

His Assistant Professorship will, among other things, entail a bio-psycho-social perspective on how normative neural/cognitive/affective development may go awry in some youth, and cause antisocial or abnormal behavior. These examinations will innovatively focus on probabilistic individual-level inferences that are data-driven, multimodal, and developmentally informed. 

Teaching

• Master Thesis Instructor
• Practice of Empirical Research
• Introduction to Developmental Psychology
• Developmental Psychopathology & Diagnostics
• Recent Advances in Developmental Psychopathology
• Prevention, Family Mediation, and Treatment in Forensic Context

PhD Supervision

• Laura Han (Amsterdam UMC/VUmc)
• Ilja Saris (Amsterdam UMC/VUmc)
• Jeanne Leerssen (Netherlands Institute of Neuroscience)
• Charlotte Boateng (LUMC)

Grants

• 2023: The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO)
  Big data and youth mental health
• 2022: The Netherlands Organisation for Health Research and Development (ZonMw)
  Personalized examinations of youth mental health
• 2021: Leiden University Fund
  Youth psychopathology and large-scale brain data analytics
• 2019: Amsterdam Neuroscience
  Neurocognitive profiling of youth psychopathology using Machine Learning
• 2018: Amsterdam Neuroscience 
  Ultra-high field (7Tesla) MRI examination of subcortex in depression
• 2017: Örebro University (Sweden) External Research Grant
  Neurobiobehavioral correlates of psychopathy in juveniles

Honours and awards

• 2019: European College of Neuropsychopharmacology 
  Travel award to visit Donders Institute Nijmegen
  Application of advanced biostatistics to psychopathology
• 2018: European College of Neuropsychopharmacology
  Young promising scientist fellowship
  - Included in a selective EU-funded initiative
  - Focus on translational psychopathology
  - Additional travel award to visit University of Rome
• 2018: European College of Neuropsychopharmacology
  Travel award for ECNP conference Barcelona
• 2016: European College of Neuropsychopharmacology
  Travel award for ECNP conference Vienna 
• 2016: European College of Neuropsychopharmacology
  Best Poster award ECNP conference Vienna
• 2015: European College of Neuropsychopharmacology
  Travel award for ECNP conference Amsterdam
• 2014: European College of Neuropsychopharmacology
  Selected for ECNP workshop Nice
• 2012: Van de Geer Award Leiden University
  Best Research MSc Thesis Institute of Psychology
  Thesis: Human Personality and Brain Network Connectivity

Links

• Scientific Output M. Aghajani (Research Gate)
• Scientific Output M. Aghajani (Google Scholar)

Publications