Our Team

Pouya Jamshidi received his MD from Weill Cornell Medicine, followed by a year of internship in Obstetrics and Gynecology at New York-Presbyterian Hospital. He then pursued an NIH-funded post-doctoral fellowship at the Mesulam Center for Cognitive Neurology and Alzheimer’s Disease at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. He completed Anatomic Pathology residency at University of Chicago – NorthShore and a fellowship in Neuropathology at Northwestern Memorial Hospital. He then joined the Department of Pathology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. His academic interests include medical education, advanced molecular diagnostics in neuropathology and neurodegenerative diseases.

Katy McCortney earned her bachelor degree in psychology from Illinois Wesleyan University. She conducted novel research at Illinois Wesleyan before joining the Social Neuroscience Lab at The University of Chicago. She joined the team at Northwestern University in 2015 where her role as Lab Manager includes coordinating research specimen requests, overseeing the administrative work, and working with the biobank team to process, collect and distribute brain and spinal cord tumor specimens for banking and research. Katy also earned a Masters of Science in Health Communication from Northwestern University in 2019. In her free time she trains for and races in triathlons.

Alicia Steffens earned her bachelor degree in biological sciences from Illinois State University before continuing on to complete IUPUI's Histotechnology program in 2015. Her career began in a clinical setting with a strong focus on embedding and microtomy skill. She then moved to a research setting, which includes her role in the Nervous System Tumor Bank where she is the principal histotechnologist. In her role here, her skills include special staining and immunohistochemistry.