Alejandro de la Vega

Curriculum Vitae

Academic Positions

2019- Research Scientist, Department of Psychology, University of Texas at Austin

2016-2019 Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Psychology, University of Texas at Austin

Education

2016 Ph.D., Cognitive Neuroscience, University of Colorado Boulder

2012 M.A., Cognitive Psychology, University of Colorado Boulder

2009 B.A., Linguistics and Cognitive Science, Pomona College

Awards

2019 Merit Abstract Award, Organization for Human Brain Mapping

2018 Winner, Open Science Naturalistic Viewing Competition, Organization for Human Brain Mapping

2017 Fellow, Neurohackweek

2012 Fellow, Summer Institute in Cognitive Neuroscience

2011 Ford Foundation Fellowship, Honorable Mention (Alternate)

2010 National Science Foundation, Predoctoral Fellowship, Honorable Mention

2010 Fellow, fMRI Training Course, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor

Active Funding

2021-2025 R01MH096906 National Institutes of Health. Large-scale image-based meta-analysis of functional MRI data. Role: PI.

2021-2024 R01MH109682 National Institutes of Health. NeuroScout: A cloud-based platform for rapid re-analysis of naturalistic fMRI datasets. Role: PI.

Scientific Contributions

Peer-reviewed journal articles

2022 Rocca, R., & De La Vega, A. (2022). Evaluating the role of non-lexical markers in GPT-2’s language modeling behavior. Proceedings of the 3rd Workshop on Evaluation and Comparison of NLP Systems, 96–102.

Niso, G., Botvinik-Nezer, R., Appelhoff, S., De La Vega, A., Esteban, O., Etzel, J. A., Finc, K., Ganz, M., Gau, R., Halchenko, Y. O., & others. (2022). Open and reproducible neuroimaging: from study inception to publication. NeuroImage, 119623.

De La Vega, A., Rocca, R., Blair, R. W., Markiewicz, C. J., Mentch, J., Kent, J. D., Herholz, P., Ghosh, S. S., Poldrack, R. A., & Yarkoni, T. (2022). Neuroscout, a unified platform for generalizable and reproducible fMRI research. Elife, 11, e79277.

2021 Halchenko, Y., Meyer, K., Poldrack, B., Solanky, D., Wagner, A., Gors, J., MacFarlane, D., Pustina, D., Sochat, V., …, De La Vega, A. et al. (2021). DataLad: distributed system for joint management of code, data, and their relationship. Journal of Open Source Software, 6(63).

Levitis, E., Van Praag, C. D. G., Gau, R., Heunis, S., DuPre, E., Kiar, G., Bottenhorn, K. L., Glatard, T., Nikolaidis, A., …, De La Vega, A., et al. (2021). Centering inclusivity in the design of online conferences—An OHBM–Open Science perspective. GigaScience, 10(8), giab051.

2020 Esteban, O., Ciric, R., Finc, K., Blair, R. W., Markiewicz, C. J., Moodie, C. A., Kent, J. D., Goncalves, M., DuPre, E., …, De La Vega, A. et al.. (2020). Analysis of task-based functional MRI data preprocessed with fMRIPrep. Nature Protocols, 15(7), 2186–2202.

2019 Brieger, K., Zajac, G.J.M, Pandit, A., Foerster, J.R., Li, K.W., Annis, A.C., Schmidt, E.M., Clark, C.P., McMorrow, K., Zhou, W., Yang, J., Kwong, A.M., Boughton, A.P., Wu, J., Scheller, C., Parikh, T., __De La Vega, A.__, Brazel, D.M., Frieser, M., Rea-Sandin, G., Fritsche, L.G., Vrieze, S.I., Abecasis, G.R. (2019). Genes for Good: Engaging the Public in Genetics Research via Social Media. American Journal of Human Genetics.

Yarkoni, T., Markiewicz, C. J., De La Vega, A., Gorgolewski, K. J., Salo, T., Halchenko, Y. O., McNamara, Q., DeStasio, K., Poline, J.-B., Petrov, D., & others. (2019). PyBIDS: Python tools for BIDS datasets. Journal of Open Source Software, 4(40).

2018 Dixon, M. L., De La Vega, A., Mills, C., Andrews-Hanna, J., Spreng, R. N., Cole, M. W., & Christoff, K. (2018). Heterogeneity within the frontoparietal control network and its relationship to the default and dorsal attention networks. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 115(7), E1598–E1607. [pdf] [github]

2017 De La Vega, A., Yarkoni, T., Wager, T. D., & Banich, M. T. (2017). Large-scale meta-analysis suggests low regional modularity in lateral frontal cortex. Cerebral Cortex, 1–15. [pdf] [github]

2017 McNamara, Q., De La Vega, A., & Yarkoni, T. (2017). Developing a comprehensive framework for multimodal feature extraction. Proceedings of the 23rd ACM SIGKDD International Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining, 1567–1574. [pdf]

2016 De La Vega, A., Chang, L. J., Banich, M. T., Wager, T. D., & Yarkoni, T. (2016). Large-scale meta-analysis of human medial frontal cortex reveals tripartite functional organization. Journal of Neuroscience, 36(24), 6553–6562. [pdf] [Journal Club review] [our response]

2014 De La Vega, A., Brown, M. S., Snyder, H. R., Singel, D., Munakata, Y., & Banich, M. T. (2014). Individual differences in the balance of GABA to glutamate in pFC predict the ability to select among competing options. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience. [pdf]

2013 Michaelson, L., De La Vega, A*., Chatham, C., & Munakata, Y. (2013). Delaying gratification depends on social trust. Frontiers in Psychology, 4, 355. [pdf] ** co-first authors

2013 Banich, M. T., De La Vega, A., Andrews-Hanna, J. R., Mackiewicz Seghete, K., Du, Y., & Claus, E. D. (2013). Developmental trends and individual differences in brain systems involved in intertemporal choice during adolescence. Psychology of Addictive Behaviors, 27(2), 416. [pdf]

Selected open-source scientific software contributions

Neuroscout. An end-to-end platform for analysis of naturalistic public fMRI datasets (https://neuroscout.org/; https://github.com/neuroscout/neuroscout; De La Vega et al., 2022).

PyBIDS. A Python library for querying and manipulating BIDS datasets (https://www.github.com/bids-standard/pybids; Yarkoni et al., 2019).

FitLins. A Python library for fitting linear models to BIDS datasets (https://www.github.com/poldracklab/fitlins; Markiewicz et al., 2019).

NeuroSynth-Compose. Platform for easily perform custom neuroimaging meta-analyses using a fully web-based platform (https://compose.neurosynth.org/; https://ww.github.com/neurostuff/neurostore).

Presentations

Conference talks and departmental lectures

2023 Best practices for robust and reproducible neuroimaging meta-analysis. Co-organizer. Organization for Human Brain Mapping Educational Course. Montreal, Canada.

2020 Automated feature extraction with Pliers. Organization for Human Brain Mapping, Analysis Methods for Naturalistic Data Educational Course. Virtual.

2019 Neuroscout: a cloud-based platform for flexible re-analysis of naturalistic fMRI datasets. Mozilla Data Club Brown Bag.

2019 Neuroscout: a cloud-based platform for flexible re-analysis of naturalistic fMRI datasets. Organization for Human Brain Mapping. Rome, Italy.

2018 An turnkey solution for rapid and flexible (re)analysis of naturalistic fMRI data. Organization for Human Brain Mapping. Singapore, Singapore.

2017 A cloud-based platform for flexible re- analysis of naturalistic fMRI datasets. International Neuroinformatics Coordinating Facility Congress. Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Professional Service

2020 Americas Hub Manager, Organization of Human Brain Mapping Hackathon, Virtual, 2020.

2019 Chair, Neuroinformatics and Data Sharing Session, Organization for Human Brain Mapping, Rome, Italy, 2019

2018 Co-Organizer, Austin Code Rodeo Neuroinformatics Hackathon

Ad-hoc peer review

Neuroimage (x5), GigaScience (x3), Scientific Reports (x2), Annual Conference on Cognitive Computational Neuroscience (x2), eNeuro, Organization for Human Brain Mapping, Proceedings of the Python in Science Conferences, Cerebral Cortex, Neuropsychologia (x3), PLOS One, Human Brain Mapping.

Teaching

2013-2016

Computer Laboratory for Instruction in Psychological Research (CLIPR) TA.

2012-2013 Teaching Assistant, General Statistics & Cognitive Neuroscience


Last updated: April 2023