ABOUT ME

Growing up in the suburbs of Phoenix, Arizona, I was fascinated by plants, animals, and human behavior. I dreamed of becoming a psychiatrist to understand behavior and help patients. However, at Lewis & Clark College, a behavioral neuroscience course changed my trajectory. While discussing the role of different parts of the brain, a professor stated, ‘the prefrontal cortex controls executive function’. I thought to myself, "Well how?" and became interested in how the molecules, cells, and circuits of our brains can do such a thing.

These questions led me to conduct research in Dr. David Ginty’s lab as a summer student through the Howard Hughes Medical Institute Exceptional Research Opportunities Program. After completing my BA in 2012, I joined the Ginty lab as a research assistant before applying to PhD programs. For graduate school, I joined the Program in Neuroscience (PiN) at Harvard University. In Dr. Susan Dymecki’s lab, I studied how serotonergic neurons give rise to behavior, specifically, how a specialized subset, the Drd2-Pet1 neurons, impact social behavior. At Harvard, I was director of Women in Neuroscience (WiN), a board member of Underrepresented Scholars in Neuroscience (USN), and a teacher/mentor in the Ed Furshpan and David Potter Native American High School Program.

In early 2021, I stared my postdoctoral fellowship in Dr. Nicola Allen’s lab at the Salk Institute studying the role of astrocyte secreted factors in neurodevelopment and neurodevelopmental disorders. My goal is to contribute to our understanding of human health through my love of neuroscience and cellular biology.