My research philosophy
There are three interlocking components that support my research and study of individual brain network variability: collaborations both inside and outside my home institution, including big-group collaborative efforts; co-working at hackathons, where many of these collaborations and projects were born; and developing open tools and resources to support and increase accessibility to rigorous, open, and reproducible science.
Endocrine variability in large-scale brain networks
Sex steroid hormones have receptors across the brain and fluctuate by orders of magnitude both during development and across adulthood, but few longitudinal neuroimaging studies have assessed sex steroid hormone changes. This work aims to better understand endocrine-mediated brain organization with respect to the adult menstrual cycle, hormonal contraceptive use, and puberty.
Photo by Reproductive Health Supplies Coalition on Unsplash
Impacts of ambient air pollutants on brain microstructure and functional connectome development
Ambient air pollution comprises chemicals with documented neurotoxic effects and it poses a particular risk to child neurodevelopment and mental health, which can have lifespan consequences. This project seeks to identify impacts of various sources of air pollution on child structural and functional brain development durting the transition to adolescence, using multivariate cross-decomposition, predictive connectomics, and mixture modeling.
Photo by Jacek Dylag on Unsplash
Heterogeneity in child and adolescent brain development
As trajectories in structural brain development are being identified, heterogeneity in these trajectories due to individual differences in development, maturation, and cognition is often overlooked. Uncovering sources and magnitudes of variability in brain development would contribute to our understanding of development and the limitations of cross-sectional research in studying it.
Photo by Milad Fakurian on Unsplash
Individual differences in brain function during physics education
University instruction in physics represents a unique experience for many individuals and STEM education best practices are increasingly important. Introductory physics courses are a gateway top many STEM majors and, thus, a pivotal node in the "leaky pipeline" leading to gender gap in STEM careers and higher education. This project assesses factors contributing to student success in introductory physics and the roles of pedagogy, gender, and behavior therein.
Photo by Sunder Muthukumaran on Unsplash
Neuroimaging meta-analysis for consensus and discovery
One approach to addressing the neuroimaging replication crisis and making quantitative sense of the overabundance of underpowered neuroimaging studies is meta-analysis. In addition to finding consensus across published studies, meta-analytic methods can uncover latent patterns across the literature and provide useful resources for primary data analysis.
Photo by Ali Shah Lakhani on Unsplash
Brain connectivity of subcortical regions at 7T
During my undergraduate and early doctoral studies, I worked on a series of projects using functional connectivity, probabilistic tractography, and meta-analytic connectivity mapping to study the hippocampus, hypothalamus, and habenula.
Photo by Alina Grubnyak on Unsplash
Always looking for more opportunities to learn and collaborate! If you're interested in working together, feel free to reach out.