Assistant Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Health
Research Interests
- Psychotic-spectrum disorders
- Social cognition
- Translational neuroscience
- Emerging adulthood
- Clinical high-risk for psychosis
Research Goals
My research focuses on the integration of multimodal data to understand the brain-behavior mechanisms that contribute to social difficulties among individuals living with psychosis, with a specific emphasis on social cognition. Critically, my work bridges assessment of neural and clinical functioning measured in the laboratory setting to key measures of functioning and experience assessed in real-world settings.
I am particularly interested in the intersectionality of first-episode psychosis and emerging adulthood – the developmental phase from the late teenage years though the 20s – and how a developmental lens may elucidate the unique needs and strengths of youth experiencing the onset of a serious mental illness. I also have interests in the use of mixed-methods approaches (i.e., computational linguistics, qualitative coding) to assess natural language and life-story narratives of individuals living with or at-risk for a psychotic-spectrum illness.
Research Techniques
- Neuroimaging
- Ambulatory Assessment/Ecological Momentary Assessment
- Clinical Assessment
- Computational Linguistics
Education
BA: University of California, Irvine
MA: Kent State University
Predoctoral Internship: Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA
PhD: Kent State University
Postdoctoral Fellowship: The Ohio State University
Honors and Awards
Regent’s Scholar – The University of California, Irvine – 2006 – 2008
Pearson Early Career Award – The American Psychological Foundation – 2016
Travel Award Fellowship – The Society of Biological Psychiatry – 2020
fMRI Training Course Scholar (NIH-funded) – University of Michigan – 2020
Henry A. & Amelia T. Nasrallah Award for Research Excellence – The Ohio State University Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Health – 2022
Research Innovation Career Development Award (RICDA) – The Ohio State University College of Medicine – 2022
Emerging Leader Award – OSU Women in Medicine in Science – 2023