Our Team

Dr. Bajic is a pediatric anesthesiologist and a neuroscientist. She conducts research in the field of ontogeny of acute and chronic opioid effects. She also provides pediatric anesthesia care in the operating room, and teaches both in the laboratory and clinical settings. Dr. Bajic received her MD from the Medical School of the University of Belgrade, Serbia and PhD from the Department of Pharmacology at the University of Illinois at Chicago, IL. Her postdoctoral training included: (1) Postdoctoral Fellow at the Department of Anatomy and Cell Biology at the University of Illinois at Chicago, (2) Anesthesia Residency training at Yale New Haven Hospital, Yale University, as well as (3) Pediatric Anesthesia Fellowship at Children's Hospital Boston, Harvard University where she now works as board certified staff pediatric anesthesiologist since 2008. She is a recipient of NIH K08 grant (with highest score 10) entitled “Ontogeny of Opioid Effect: Animal – Human Correlation (2013-2018).”

Dr. Barakat's research focus is on establishing advanced MRI techniques as neurodiagnostic tools to examine the pediatric spinal cord and the characterization of small nerve bundles. She has contributed to identifying the feasibility and reliability of DTI in the pediatric population, and showed differences in DTI values between children with myelitis and controls. Dr. Barakat is a recipient of a NIH K25 research grant to examine pain involvement in patients with spinal cord neuro-inflammatory disease. Her professional aspiration is to employ extensive knowledge of engineering principles to improve medical outcomes in the field of pediatric imaging, along with improve the health of patients with neurological disabilities with more effective technologies and imaging techniques.

Dr. Holmes' interests pertain to understanding how pathways of information processing in the brain adapt to pathology, trauma, and environmental stressors. He has completed degrees in Kinesiology (McMaster University - Bachelors), Sensorimotor Neurosciences (University of Western Ontario - Masters) and Neurorehabilitation (McGill University - Doctoral) as well as post-doctoral work in concussion research and the use of functional MRI as a diagnostic tool (McGill University). Dr. Holmes' work as a Research Fellow at Harvard University and Boston Children’s Hospital focuses on delineating pain pathways in pediatric cohorts and determining factors that predispose patients to elevated and prolonged pain responses.

Dr. Karunakaran is a Research Fellow at the Boston Children's Hospital and Harvard Medical School. She received her Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering jointly awarded by the New Jersey Institute of Technology and Rutgers Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences. Her dissertation focused on the multimodal implementation of MRI, fMRI, and fNIRS to study brain reorganization after Spinal Cord Injury. Her current work in the P.A.I.N group involves the development and application of non-invasive neuroimaging approaches to understand the cortical mechanisms associated with the generation and chronification of pain. 

Dr. Lebel is the founder and director of the Pediatric Headache Program and Senior Associate in Neurology and Anesthesiology at Boston Children’s Hospital. She is also an Associate Professor of Anesthesiology at Harvard Medical School.  Her research focuses on children and adolescents with headache and chronic pain. She is currently overseeing studies aimed at better understanding and treating new daily persistent headache in children and adolescents; evaluating the efficacy of nerve blocks in adolescents and young adults with post-concussive headache; and quantifying sympathetic and parasympathetic tone in youth with differing headache diagnoses.

Dr. Moulton is an Assistant Professor of Anesthesiology at Harvard Medical School, and is a research associate at Boston Children's Hospital. He earned his OD from the New England College of Optometry, and his PhD in Neuroscience from the University of Maryland, Baltimore. His scientific interests are in sensory processing and its translation into perception/behavior. He has been awarded an R21 Exploratory/Developmental Research Grant Award from the National Cancer Institute to determine the impact of cerebellar tumor resection on pain in pediatric patients. He has also been a recipient of a K01 Mentored Research Scientist Development Award from the National Institute on Drug Abuse to assess the relationship between pain and the cerebellum in healthy volunteers.

Dr. Peng holds a Ph.D. in biomedical engineering from Ecole Polytechnique, University of Montreal, Canada. He received his B. Sc. degree in automation from Tsinghua University, China and his M.Sc.A. degree in computer engineering from Ecole Polytechnique, University of Montreal, Canada.  Dr. Peng was formerly a postdoc research fellow with the Center for Pain and the Brain.  He recently obtained independent funding, but has maintained Associated Personnel status with the lab.  His research interests pertain to the application of novel optical neuroimaging techniques in the study of pain and analgesia mechanism, perioperative pain assessment, and intensive care.

Dr. Sieberg is a Clinical Psychologist in the Department of Anesthesia at Boston Children's Hospital and an Assistant Professor in Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. She is Co-founder and Co-Director of the Biobehavioral Pediatric Pain Lab at Boston Children's Hospital. Dr. Sieberg’s research in the area of pediatric pain has included measure development, treatment outcome, and the exploration of biopsychosocial factors contributing to persistent and chronic pain.

Dr. Simons is an associate professor of anesthesiology, perioperative and pain medicine (pediatric), a staff psychologist at the Pain Management Center, and the Director of the Biobehavioral Pediatric Pain Lab at the Stanford University Medical Center. She is a committed researcher and clinician with a primary focus on assessment and development of treatment interventions to improve the lives of youth with chronic pain. Laura’s program of research encompasses therapeutic program development and evaluation, coping with pain, parent responses to pain, anxiety/fear, psychophysiology, and assessment scale development with pediatric populations. She has received several grants and awards to support her research efforts, with a recently awarded Early Career Award in Pediatric Pain by the International Association for the Study of Pain. Since departing for Stanford in late 2016, Dr. Simons maintains a research associate appointment at Boston Children’s Hospital and continues to work closely with the PAIN group.