I’ve always been curious how the interactions of billions of cells can lead to complex phenomena like thought and behavior. I started doing research on temporal perception in rats about 15 years ago, and eventually found my way from circuits to cells to genes. In undergrad at Middlebury College, I studied genetic contributors to complex traits—specifically, ethanol sensitivity and anxiety-like behavior—in the lab of Dr. Clarissa Parker. In graduate school, I shifted focus to the epigenetic mechanisms neural stem cells (NSCs) use to produce the necessary neuronal diversity for a functional brain. Working in the labs of Drs. Daniel Lim & Arturo Alvarez-Buylla at UCSF, I helped discover a novel “memory system” that NSCs in the ventral subventricular zone use to remember their birthplace as the brain grows, which was published in Science. I continued tracing regionally-defined NSC family trees using single-cell sequencing technology, published in eLife. In my postdoc, I began studying the other major cell-state transition that occurs in life: aging. In the lab of Dr. Steven Goldman at URMC, I led an effort to understand the changes glial progenitor cells (GPCs)—bipotential cells that can make astrocytes and myelinating oligodendrocytes—undergo with age. Although this work is still underway, we found that adult GPCs turn on repressive gene networks that shut down the youth-associated programs characteristic of self-renewing fetal GPCs. This work was published in Nature Communications.

For more information on my research and publications, check out my CV. For more on my work in science communication, see here.