Alpen received her PhD in Clinical Anatomy, at Istanbul Medipol University, Turkey, where she worked on diffusion tractography of cerebellar pathways and their clinical correlations of posterior fossa tumors pre- and postoperatively. Currently, she is a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Radiology at Harvard Medical School and a research fellow in the Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging at Massachusetts General Hospital at Takahashi Lab. Her research focuses on brain development in typical and neurodevelopmental disorders in fetuses, newborns, infants and young adults using cutting-edge imaging methods. She likes horseback riding, exploring the New England beaches and collecting antique anatomy books.