I am a postdoctoral fellow at the Perception, Language, and Attention in Youth (PLAY) Lab at RIT's National Technical Institute for the Deaf, as part of the Rochester Postdoctoral Partnership Program (RPP). Growing up as the only deaf student for most of my K-12 school years gave me direct insight into language access challenges I now study professionally.  After completing my PhD in Educational Neuroscience at Gallaudet University, I now research how the experience of being deaf and acquiring a signed language as a visuospatial language impacts how we learn and understand. I am also interested in how the interplay of embodied cognition and educational technologies can be leveraged for STEM learning.

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Outside the lab, I enjoy traveling near and afar, camping under starry skies, staying active, and relaxing with a good book and my cats. My path from teaching deaf students to researching neuroscience continues to be driven by my goal to improve educational experiences for deaf people. I bring my perspective as both a deaf person and a scientist to my work, which has earned me fellowships like the Society for Neuroscience Scholars Program and multiple research awards. As a researcher, I enjoy connecting the dots between neuroscience, education, and deaf studies to make a difference in how we understand language and learning.