Mălina Cuşnir | TRAINEE
I graduated from the University of Southampton (UK) in 2020 with a BSc in Criminology and Psychology. In 2022, I completed a clinical psychology traineeship in the Neurology Department of a hospital in Romania, where I interacted primarily with patients with neurological and psychiatric conditions. After spending some time working in human resources, I decided it was time to focus on what I had always found most fulfilling: neuroscience. In 2025, I started the Research Master’s in Cognitive Neuroscience at Radboud University, and I am looking forward to building a career in research.
My research interests mainly relate to translational neuroscience. I am especially interested in the mechanisms that could explain why individuals with the same diagnosis respond differently to treatments and experience different courses of disease. I hope my contributions to research will reveal insights that inform better therapeutic practices and help tailor treatment plans to individual needs.
I joined the Motivational & Cognitive Control Lab in September 2026 as an intern. My project belongs to the ComPassTRD study and explores how habenula activity during Pavlovian value learning relates to treatment response to esketamine in people with treatment-resistant depression.