Pain Research Center

David Shurtleff, Ph.D., Acting Director of Pain Research Center

David Shurtleff, Ph.D., is deputy director of the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health at the National Institutes of Health, the leading Federal agency for research on integrative and complementary health practices. Dr. Shurtleff is also the acting scientific director of the NCCIH Division of Intramural Research (DIR) and acting director of the Pain Research Center in DIR. Learn more about Dr. Shurtleff.

Eleni Frangos, Ph.D., Staff Scientist, Lead Scientific Officer

Eleni Frangos, Ph.D. is a staff scientist and the lead scientific officer of the Pain Research Center. Her research focuses on behavioral and neural pain mechanisms in healthy and chronic pain populations and on the development of noninvasive and nonpharmaceutical methods of pain modulation. Dr. Frangos attended Rutgers University and received her Ph.D. in psychology-behavioral neuroscience in 2014, M.A. in psychology in 2012, and B.A. in biology in 2009. Her work at Rutgers with Dr. Barry Komisaruk was funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Initiative for Minority Biomedical Research Support (MBRS) Maximizing Student Development (IMSD) fellowship program; it provided the first functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) evidence that the vagus nerve is accessible noninvasively via the surface of the ear and the neck, which has therapeutic implications in pain, depression, and epilepsy, and has since created new areas of research on the applications of noninvasive vagus nerve stimulation. She completed her postdoctoral fellowship at NIH with Dr. M. Catherine Bushnell in 2019. Prior to coming to NIH, Dr. Frangos also held a 5-year adjunct professorship position at New Jersey City University where she taught physiological psychology and senior research seminar. Contact Dr. Frangos at eleni.frangos@nih.gov .

Binquan Wang, Ph.D., M.S., Senior Staff Scientist, MRI Data Analyst

As a part of the Pain Research Center, Binquan (Bin) Wang, Ph.D. is involved in pain research and brain imaging of healthy volunteers and pain patients and oversees the acquisition and analysis of neuroimaging data. Dr. Wang has worked as a program analyst at the National Intrepid Center of Excellence, where he was involved in studies of traumatic brain injury. Dr. Wang received degrees (B.S. and M.S.) in physics from Huashong University of Science & Technology, China, and a Ph.D. in applied physics from Shanghai Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics, China. Dr. Wang completed postdoctoral training in neuroimaging data acquisition and data analysis from the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio. Contact Dr. Wang at binquan.wang@nih.gov or 301-451-2026.

Hayley Hansen, Clinical Research Coordinator

Hayley Hansen is a clinical research coordinator with the Pain Research Center at NCCIH and the Clinical Trials Unit at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. Hayley received her B.S. in neuroscience with minors in chemistry, child and adolescent mental health studies, and American Sign Language from New York University in 2018. She received her M.S. in physiology and biophysics with a focus in complementary and alternative medicine from Georgetown University in 2019. Hayley is particularly interested in integrative approaches to pediatric cancer-related pain and whole person care.

Hayley Owens, Clinical Research Coordinator

Hayley Owens is a clinical research coordinator and sensory testing technician who is currently working on pain phenotyping and helping to identify the mechanisms behind different pain states. Hayley received her B.S. in psychology with a minor in neuroscience from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and is currently working on her master’s degree in public health.

Andrew Levitsky, Sensory Research Technician

Andrew Levitsky is a sensory research technician at NCCIH. After earning his master’s degree in neural engineering from Arizona State University in 2019, Andrew worked in the Lab in Multisensory Neuroscience at Carnegie Mellon University, where he conducted EEG and sensory testing for hearing loss. In the Pain Research Center, his work is focused on developing program scripts, quantitative sensory testing, fNIRS (functional near-infrared spectroscopy), and data analysis, working both within NCCIH and collaboratively with teams from other Institutes, such as the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke and the National Institute of Nursing Research.