I will start as an Assistant Professor in the University of Utah Department of Neurobiology in January 2026! My lab will focus on body–brain interactions in learning and memory. We will bring together new perspectives and tools — from systems and computational neuroscience, physiology, genomics, and biochemistry — to address basic questions about the neurobiology of interoception and learning.

I will be recruiting lab members at all levels! Prospective graduate students should apply to the University of Utah’s Neuroscience PhD Program or Molecular Biology PhD Program. Prospective postdocs or postbaccs/technicians should contact me directly.

Currently: I am a postdoctoral fellow in Ilana Witten’s lab at the Princeton Neuroscience Institute. My postdoc work focuses on a long-standing mystery about learning from gut-to-brain feedback: How are we able to associate the flavors we experience during a meal with postingestive effects like food poisoning that arise much later? We recently discovered (Nature 2025) a learning algorithm that might allow the brain to overcome this long gap between cause (🥘🍲) and effect (🤢🤮): Delayed illness signals from the gut selectively reactivate and strengthen the neural representation of flavors from a recent meal in the amygdala (a key brain region for learning and emotion). This neural plasticity may help us to avoid foods that have made us sick in the future, and shows how the common phrase we associate with unexpected nausea — that “it must be something I ate” — is hard-wired into the brain.

Previously: I was a graduate student in Zachary Knight’s lab in the UCSF Department of Physiology. My PhD thesis research focused on the neurobiology of thirst and drinking behavior.