I am a cognitive neuroscientist focused on understanding how children learn and how disabilities may interfere with their educational goals. I'm an Assistant Professor in Psychology & Human Development at Vanderbilt University working in the area of Educational Neuroscience.

My research primarily focuses on the development of mathematical skills and the neurocognitive mechanisms that enable this type of cognition. Sometimes this means I am collaborating with intervention specialists to do school-based research about why some children are struggling to learn. Other times, this means that I am running a neuroimaging experiment with typically developing adults to understand the basic science of how a specific brain mechanism works. I also use techniques such as eye-tracking, structural brain imaging, and meta-analysis of behavioral and neuro-imaging data.

2024 Rising Star Award, Association for Psychological Science (APS).

2021 Western University Postdoctoral Scholar of the Year.

2019–2021 Banting Postdoctoral Fellowship (only 70 awarded yearly across Canada), awarded by The Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) $140,000 CAD ($70K per year CAD).

2019–2021 BrainsCAN Tier I Postdoctoral Fellowship Award Top-Up, University of Western Ontario, $20,000 CAD ($10K per year CAD).

2018 Travel grant award by BrainsCAN to attend a workshop on Open Science at University College Cork, Ireland (October 2018).

2017–2018 Hardy Culver Wilcoxon Award, presented by the Peabody College Department of Psychology & Human Development (Vanderbilt University) to the graduate student with the most distinguished doctoral dissertation in any area of Psychological Inquiry.

2017 Competitive Research-Achievement Fellowship from Vanderbilt Department of Psychology and Human Development. Award provides stipend for one semester to pursue research aims that build on a previous first-author publication.

2016 Fellow at Kavli Summer Institute in Cognitive Neuroscience, UC Santa Barbara, 2016. Fellowship for tuition, room, and board.

2016 Stipend awarded from NIH to present at NIH and IES funded Math Cognition and Learning Conference special topic: The Role of Linguistic and Cultural Factors in Mathematical Cognitive Development, Ft. Worth, Texas.

2015–2018 Peabody Dean’s Fellowship for PhD (Vanderbilt University).

2013–2018 Peabody Graduate Honors Scholarship (Vanderbilt University).

2014 IMBES outstanding poster award at International Mind, Brain and Education Society, Fort Worth, TX.

See Publications

2020-2023 Co-Investigator (PI’s David Purpura, Caroline Hornburg), My Math Stories: Taking My Place in Our Mathematical World, NewSchools Venture Fund, $2,000,000 USD. https://www.efmathprogram.org/our-mathematical-world

2022-2023 Collaborator (PI Benjamin Clarke), Mapping Non-Response to Math Interventions NSF (1660840) – Subaward to Vanderbilt for 2022/2023

PSY-PC 2250 Cognitive Aspects of Human Development