I am currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders at the University of Vermont.
I got started in research as a sophomore at the University of Vermont, where I worked as an intern with Dr. Julie Dumas in the Clinical Neuroscience Research Unit in the Department of Psychiatry. I completed my senior honors thesis -- an fMRI study on language and executive control in Japanese speakers -- in this lab and, upon graduating, stayed on for two years as a Research Assistant with Dr. Dumas and Dr. Paul Newhouse, working on clinical trials of mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer's disease.
I moved abroad for graduate school at the University of Nottingham in the UK where, under the supervision of Drs. Walter van Heuven and Kathy Conklin, I received an MSc in Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging and then a PhD in Cognitive Psychology from the School of Psychology. In my graduate work I studied the cognitive and neural substrates of language processing in bilinguals using methodologies such as EEG and fMRI. During my PhD I also spent six months as a Guest Researcher at the National Institute of Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD), part of the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, performing a neuroimaging study on bilingualism in the lab of Dr. Barry Horwitz.
Following completion of my PhD I returned to the US as a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Division of Cognitive Neurology/Neuropsychology in the Department of Neurology at Johns Hopkins, working with Drs. Barry Gordon and Kerry Ledoux on language processing in individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). I stayed in this lab during a second postdoc as a Distinguished Science of Learning Fellow through the Johns Hopkins Science of Learning Institute, in which I developed a line of translational research exploring neuromodulation and empirically-based interventions for improving reading comprehension in individuals with ASD.
In August 2017 I joined faculty at the University of Vermont in the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, where I am continuing my research using EEG and fMRI to investigate language processing in individuals with ASD. In several lines of research, I have started exploring semantic processing, or understanding the meaning of language, and narrative comprehension, or how we understand stories, in both linguistic (i.e., through written or spoken language) and non-linguistic (i.e., through pictures or visual languages) modalities. I am also teaching at the undergraduate and graduate levels.
You can read more about my specific research interests here.
And when I'm not studying brains, I like to rest my own by reading, doing yoga, spending time with my husband and children, and getting out into the woods as much as possible.
I got started in research as a sophomore at the University of Vermont, where I worked as an intern with Dr. Julie Dumas in the Clinical Neuroscience Research Unit in the Department of Psychiatry. I completed my senior honors thesis -- an fMRI study on language and executive control in Japanese speakers -- in this lab and, upon graduating, stayed on for two years as a Research Assistant with Dr. Dumas and Dr. Paul Newhouse, working on clinical trials of mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer's disease.
I moved abroad for graduate school at the University of Nottingham in the UK where, under the supervision of Drs. Walter van Heuven and Kathy Conklin, I received an MSc in Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging and then a PhD in Cognitive Psychology from the School of Psychology. In my graduate work I studied the cognitive and neural substrates of language processing in bilinguals using methodologies such as EEG and fMRI. During my PhD I also spent six months as a Guest Researcher at the National Institute of Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD), part of the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, performing a neuroimaging study on bilingualism in the lab of Dr. Barry Horwitz.
Following completion of my PhD I returned to the US as a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Division of Cognitive Neurology/Neuropsychology in the Department of Neurology at Johns Hopkins, working with Drs. Barry Gordon and Kerry Ledoux on language processing in individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). I stayed in this lab during a second postdoc as a Distinguished Science of Learning Fellow through the Johns Hopkins Science of Learning Institute, in which I developed a line of translational research exploring neuromodulation and empirically-based interventions for improving reading comprehension in individuals with ASD.
In August 2017 I joined faculty at the University of Vermont in the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, where I am continuing my research using EEG and fMRI to investigate language processing in individuals with ASD. In several lines of research, I have started exploring semantic processing, or understanding the meaning of language, and narrative comprehension, or how we understand stories, in both linguistic (i.e., through written or spoken language) and non-linguistic (i.e., through pictures or visual languages) modalities. I am also teaching at the undergraduate and graduate levels.
You can read more about my specific research interests here.
And when I'm not studying brains, I like to rest my own by reading, doing yoga, spending time with my husband and children, and getting out into the woods as much as possible.
