about me

I am a behavioral neuroscientist that also happens to be a 5th PhD candidate in the Dartmouth Psychological and Brain Sciences Department working with Dr. Kyle Smith. My main experise is in the brain circuitry that underlies motivation and learning, as well as related psychiatric and substance use disorders. Outside of the lab, I’m quite passionate about science communication and outreach, and I was a coordinator of a local chapter of the Brain Bee for a few years. I also greatly enjoyed my time as an instructor for several courses, and especially as a mentor in the lab, where I spent a lot of time teaching hands-on wet bench techniques to young undergraduates and fresh graduate students.

about my work

The nucleus accumbens is a brain region that is heavily implicated in reward and learning. I have spent the last few years exploring the dopaminergic and cholinergic mechanisms in this region using cutting-edge techniques including pharmacology, fiber photometry, optogenetics, and electrophysiology. I recently discovered key transmission in this area that underlies behavioral flexibility, stable motivation, and trial-and-error learning all during one single task. This could potentially change our current neural frameworks of how learning and motivation are encoded in the brain to inform and create behavior.

Despite all that… behavior is my real bread and butter, and from my biased perspective, where the real magic happens. I combine microcircuit dissections with deep and detailed analysis of behavior (specifically, Pavlovian conditioned approach in the form of sign-tracking) in an effort to understand how fine behavioral structures can flexibly adjust when new information is learned, and what brain mechanisms might be attributed to this ability. I recently developed some novel measures for studying motivated behaviors in animals with greater detail and in multiple dimensions. I’m aiming to capture individual differences and natural variation in both behavior and neural transmission. Studying what animals are really doing (i.e., gnawing and grabbing), rather than just observing the behavior’s side effect (i.e., a lever press), has the potential to unlock new discoveries about the brain as well as elucidate contradictory evidence we might already have. I hope that my work can inspire others to study behavior on a more meaningful level.

a bit more if you'd like ...

I’m originally from the DC metropolitan area, and went to Virginia Tech (go Hokies!) for my 2 bachelor’s degrees in Cognitive & Behavioral Neuroscience and Psychology. I graduated in 2020. I was a part of Dr. Daniel English’s lab, working on hippocampal microcircuits, place cell tuning, and spatial navigation using optogenetics and in vivo electrophysiology. I had a brief stint in neurogenetics and ultrasonic vocalizations in Dr. J. Michael Bowers’ lab, as well as autism in nonverbal children with Dr. Angela Scarpa.

Besides science, I’m a huge foodie and I enjoy cooking elaborate meals that I can pair a nice wine with (I took a wine tasting and geography course in another life). I also love to find new and exciting restaurants, but tend to be a very stubborn creature of habit (research is me-search, right?) so I have some difficulty going anywhere other than the 3 places I adore. I love to read books with unreliable narrators (follow me on StoryGraph!). I’m a novice potter and crocheter, and a wannabe vinyl collector and audiophile. I play five instruments, but my favorite is the flute. I am also a retired barre and pilates instructor, so I’m always on the hunt for a fun fitness class.