I am a neuroscientist studying the relationship between the brain and behavior at the intersection of neuroscience and evolution. I have spent my scientific career investigating how social interactions and group dynamics influence the brain and consequently behavior, using an integrative approach to uncover fundamental principles of neural organization in the vertebrate brain. My work explores the specific ways in which different types of social bonds, like those between pair bonded partners, or parents and offspring, change the structure of the brain and how different neural components interact with dynamic environmental conditions to facilitate social decisions.  

Currently, as National Science Foundation postdoctoral fellow in the lab of Hans Hofmann at the University of Texas at Austin I employ the monogamous bi-parental Convict Cichlid as a model system to explore how fundamental social behaviors like sex, aggression, and parental care are orchestrated within the brain.

My undergraduate studies were completed at the University of Colorado at Boulder, and afterwards I worked as an environmental Engineer with CH2M Hill and INTERA at the Hanford Site in Washing state. My PhD work was conducted at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in the lab of Justin Rhodes. While I worked on a variety of projects, from substance abuse in traditional rodent models, to active brain feminization in a sex changing fish, I primarily explored how oxytocin and vasopressin signaling pathways interact to influence trade-offs between offspring care and offspring defense in the False Clown anemonefish Amphiprion ocellaris.

My journey as a scientist began at a young age in the hill country outside of Austin, TX where I spent much of my childhood exploring the landscape and animals around me. Often, you can still find me there.