Dr. Indira Turney’s fascination with how the brain ages began when her grandmother was diagnosed with dementia. After growing up watching her grandmother lose her memories, Indira decided to leave the small Caribbean island where she had spent her childhood and went to the University of the Virgin Islands to study psychology. There, she got involved in clinical research and was immediately engaged with how neuroimaging tools like MRI can be used to study the process of memory and the aging brain. She followed her research interests to a predoctoral program at the University of Pittsburgh and, ultimately, to her PhD at Penn State where she worked under Dr. Nancy Dennis to study false memories in aging people using fMRI. At her current position as a postdoctoral researcher at Columbia University, Indira has followed her interests in the aging brain to study the impacts of life experiences in a diverse population using a combinatorial approach of neuroimaging, biology, and sociocultural methods. Her research addresses the long-standing dearth of Latin X, Black, and Indigenous people of color in neuroscientific and psychiatric research by finally including a representative population in her studies. She has already found that brain aging is accelerated among Black adults, likely caused by the forces of systemic racism on long-term health outcomes. Despite facing personal challenges born out of a lack of community when starting her PhD, Indira took it upon herself to rejuvenate the Black Graduate Student Association at Penn State. In her already impressive career, Indira continues to use her research and time to build community spaces that foster a sense of belonging and empathetic, culturally-appropriate support for underrepresented students. We look forward to the impact her justice-driven research will have on the field of neuroscience and the world.

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