Caterina Gratton

Caterina Gratton serves as Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology and at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology within the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign's College of Liberal Arts & Sciences, where her research investigates individual variability in functional brain organization and its relationship to cognition and neuropsychiatric disorders using advanced neuroimaging methodologies.

Her academic foundation includes a B.S. in Psychology & Neuroscience from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, a Ph.D. in Neuroscience from the University of California, Berkeley, and postdoctoral training in Cognitive Neuroscience.

Dr. Gratton's research program centers on precision approaches to mapping individual brain networks, with significant contributions to understanding inhibitory control mechanisms, neural bases of mood disorders, and methodological innovations in functional connectivity analysis. Her work integrates high-resolution neuroimaging with behavioral paradigms to establish robust brain-behavior relationships while developing open science resources for the neuroscience community.

Analysis of her recent publications reveals a strong trajectory toward precision neuroscience, characterized by methodological rigor in capturing individual differences through resources like the EPIC dataset (5,000+ trials per participant across cognitive control tasks) and specialized toolboxes for network variant classification. Her work spans cognitive control, resting-state dynamics, and task-based network organization, with increasing emphasis on clinical applications for disorders like bipolar disorder.

Dr. Gratton actively mentors graduate students and postdoctoral researchers through the Gratton Lab, supported by competitive research funding though specific grants are not detailed in available materials. Her training philosophy emphasizes methodological innovation and open science practices.

The Gratton Lab maintains an active open science presence through GitHub repositories and Illinois Experts, providing critical resources including the EPIC dataset, Midnight Scan Club tutorials (MATLAB/Python), and specialized analysis toolboxes for functional network mapping that have been widely adopted by the neuroscience community.