I received my undergraduate degree from MIT and my PhD from the Boston University School of Medicine. Afterwards, I trained at the Boston VA Healthcare System and Harvard Medical School as a Special Geriatric Fellow before coming to Cornell as a postdoctoral fellow with a National Institute on Aging National Research Service Award F32 fellowship. I am now a Research Associate. In 2024, I was named a National Institute on Aging Butler Williams Scholar. I use structural and functional MRI, pupillometry, neurocognitive assessment, genetic analysis, measurement of many clinically relevant variables such as metabolic health, blood pressure, and blood sugar control, sensory testing, and a wide variety of sociodemographic measures to assess the function and health of neuromodulatory systems, particularly the locus coeruleus/norepinephrine (LC-NE) system, across the lifespan. My work also now includes vagus nerve stimulation designed to directly tune and improve LC-NE functioning.

Outside of the lab I am also a violinist with over 20 years of experience playing orchestral and chamber repertoire. I continue to study, practice, and perform, including as 2nd violin in the Cayuga Chamber Orchestra. In my free time, I enjoy science fiction literature, vipassana meditation, cooking and baking, spending time outdoors, and raising my two spirited children with my husband. I always felt compelled to research personal interests with the same level of rigor with which I approach my work, and take special pride in questioning the cultural assumptions and cognitive biases lurking the way we think and live. I live with my family in a fossil-fuel-free solar house in Ithaca, NY.