I am a science enthusiast and advocate. I am a trained neuroscientist who is passionate about communicating science, through teaching, outreach, writing, and media relations.
Right now, I am a scientific writer/editor at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, part of the National Institutes of Health. I got into government work through the executive branch AAAS Science policy fellowship at the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders. Working at the NIH is great, because I get to interface with scientists, communication professionals, and advocacy groups to create content and share knowledge about research and evidence-based practice. It also turns out that I really enjoy creating--anything from a press release to a fact sheet on alcohol and the brain, to a social media post. I found my sweet spot in this brand of science-adjacent career path. I earned my Ph.D. in the Department of Neurobiology and Behavior at Cornell University in 2015. It's an amazingly unique department, whose work spans developmental neuroscience, motor and sensory systems, neuroethology, and field behavior (like in mating behavior in Australian birds :) ). My research explored how your state of mind can influence how you experience the world. Under my advisor, Dr. Christiane Linster, I explored this question through the smell system in rodents. Specifically, I studied how stress can influence odor experiences. When you are stressed, among a host of other things, you release a neurochemical called noradrenaline across the brain. One of the important brain areas in this case is the olfactory bulb, the first relay station for odor information in the brain. I found that noradrenaline can influence behavior and well as cellular processes in the olfactory bulb. Read more here! After graduate school, I did a 2 year stint as a Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow at Cornell. I managed the transition of two courses from traditional to active lectures: Introduction to Behavior and Introduction to Neurobiology. I learned about managing people, expectations, and student and faculty experiences in and out of the classroom. |