About me

I'm a systems and cognitive neuroscientist, primarily interested in how our brains process incoming sensory information into coherent perceptions of the world.

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I'm currently a postdoc in the lab of Dr. Hal Blumenfeld in the department of Neurology at Yale University, where I (mostly) study the neural mechanisms of auditory conscious perception.

I completed my doctoral work at the University of Pennsylvania where I was part of the wonderful Neuroscience Graduate Group. I was advised by Dr. Yale Cohen, and studied the representation of auditory streaming at the single neuron level.

I went to college at the University of Virginia and majored in Cognitive Science and Comparative Literature (I used the latter as an excuse to study abroad in Freiburg, Germany). I got my start in lab work in Dr. Janine Caira's lab at the University of Connecticut (in my hometown), and had my first neuroscience research experience with Dr. DeForest Mellon at UVa.

I'm passionate about science advocacy and education, and have a special interest in supporting women in STEM fields. I'm involved in the development of tools for effective scientific communication and education of the public.

Outside of science, I dabble in graphic design, digital art, and fiction-writing, and spend much of my free time hiking the woods of New England with my husband and dog.

Research.

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Neural basis of (auditory) conscious perception (2009-present)

One of the fundamental roles—perhaps the most fundamental role—of our brain is to transform external stimuli into internal representations that we can use to perceive and make decisions about the world around us. However, the neural mechanisms that govern these processes remain incompletely understood. Both my doctoral and postdoctoral research have tackled the question of how sensory stimuli—specifically sounds—get transformed into (auditory) perceptions.

My doctoral work and postdoctoral project with Dr. Yale Cohen tackled this with animal models of hearing, and combined behavior with single- and multi-unit recordings from neurons within the auditory cortex.

My postdoctoral work with Dr. Hal Blumenfeld uses multiple recording techniques with humans performing perceptual tasks. Specifically, I combine behavior on novel auditory perceptual threshold tasks with intracranial EEG in patients with intractable epilepsy and high-density scalp EEG and eyetracking/pupillometry recorded from healthy participants. I also lend a helping hand to similar studies with tactile and visual stimuli, to determine whether there are shared mechanisms of conscious perception across modalites.

Undergraduate research (2004-2008)

Honors Thesis (2007-2008)

My first neuroscience research was in Dr. Deforest Mellon’s lab in the Department of Biology at the University of Virginia. I performed and analyzed neurophysiological recordings to characterize the neural activity associated with a sensory hair on the crayfish antennule. We described a novel mechanism (position-dependent axonal conduction velocity) for coincidence detection, which serves as a component of a pathway that triggers a tail-flip escape response (a startle reflex).

Parasitology (2004-2008)

My first research experience was in Dr. Janine Caira’s lab in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Connecticut. There, I studied the tapeworms of sharks and rays. My main project laid the groundwork for a re-description of one tapeworm genus, and the establishment of a second genus. I also assisted with databasing the historical record of parasites at the British Museum of Natural History for the Global Cestode Database, a National Science Foundation’s Partnerships for Enhancing Expertise in Taxonomy initiative. I also got a species named after me!

Select Publications.

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