Alia Mahama-Rodriguez is a Stuttgart-based model and multidisciplinary artist, originally from Mayagüez, Puerto Rico. Her creative vision is deeply shaped by her rich multicultural heritage—rooted in her mother’s Spanish, Portuguese, and French lineage and her father’s Ghanaian Asante roots. Alia is fluent in Spanish, French, German, and Asante Twi.

Alia holds a Bachelor’s degree in Biomedical Engineering and Neuroscience and a Master’s in Computational Biology and Bioinformatics from the University of Texas at Dallas. She began her career as a Neural Engineer at Abbott Neuromodulation, where she worked on clinical neurotechnology for therapeutic brain stimulation, before pivoting to academic research in Computational Neuropsychiatry. Her work lies at the intersection of affective neuroscience, neuroimaging, and computational modeling, with a specific focus on maladaptive cognitive processes in psychiatric disorders. Alia investigates impaired decision-making, disrupted self-regulation, and altered introspective capacities—features central to conditions such as addiction, schizophrenia, and hallucinosis. Her research integrates functional MRI with neuroeconomic paradigms and transcriptomic data, aiming to identify neural signatures and mechanistic biomarkers of dysfunction across both behavioral and molecular levels.

In addition to pursuing modeling, Alia serves as the Lead Technical Coding Instructor at BlackGirlsCode Dallas chapter and founded a nonprofit in 2019 where trauma-informed yoga classes are held free-of-cost to populations more susceptible to trauma/cPTSD (i.e. incarcerated inmates, sexual assault survivors, homeless shelters) and has served as a mentor in Women Mentoring Women in Engineering since 2021.

Currently, Alia is pursuing her Doctorate/PhD in Computational Neuroscience with a focus on Psychiatry at Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen.

Direct further inquiries to contact@aliamahama.com.