BIo

I grew up in a small town in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan (population ~1,000), located on a Native American reservation along the shores of Lake Superior. The first of my family to attend college, I graduated from the University of Michigan with a B.S. in Neuroscience in 2009. As an undergraduate, I was fortunate to meet Dr. Shelly Flagel, who provided me with my first neuroscience research experience. Under her guidance, I was involved in a series of projects exploring individual differences in the acquisition and expression of cue-reward associations, and whether these behavioral differences may serve as a potential predictor of enhanced vulnerability to developing addictive-like behaviors. My time with Shelly gave me a solid foundation in behavioral and pharmacological approaches to understanding the brain and spurred my interest in pursuing a career in neuroscience.

I received my PhD in Neurobiology from the University of Chicago in 2015. Here, under the supervision of Dr. Harriet de Wit, I transitioned from animal to human behavioral work. I was drawn to Harriet’s lab primarily due to her unique approach to bridging preclinical and clinical research by replicating findings from animal research in healthy humans. In my PhD thesis, I explored how healthy adults acquire and express conditioned responses to environmental cues, inspired by the work I did as an undergraduate with Dr. Flagel. I became particularly interested in the affective or emotional responses elicited by drug-associated cues, and how these responses may contribute to repeated drug use.

In 2015, I left the Midwest to take a postdoc position in Sweden. I joined the brand new Center for Social and Affective Neuroscience at Linköping University, lead by Dr. Markus Heilig. As a part of Markus’ lab, I kept my translational focus, but extended it beyond studies in healthy humans to also include clinical populations. My current interests include stress and affective processing, with a particular interest in the endocannabinoid system. My hope is that, by understanding how stress and affect interact in healthy humans, we can provide insight into how dysregulation of these processes contribute to psychiatric disorders such as post-traumatic stress disorder or substance use disorders.

I started as an assistant professor at the Center for Social and Affective Neuroscience at Linköping University in Sweden in 2022, due in part to a 4-year Starting Grant from the Swedish Research Council. In the fall of 2022, we will move to Canada where I will became the inaugural Parker Chair in Psychedelics Research at the University of Calgary’s Department of Psychiatry, Mathison Centre for Mental Health Research and Education, and Hotchkiss Brain Institute.

My journey into a scientific career is not just the story of myself, but also the countless people in my life who have helped me along the way. I am grateful to my supportive parents, my ever-encouraging sister, and my understanding husband who graciously agreed to accompany me on the wild ride that is a career in academic science. I owe much to the scientific mentors and colleagues who invested their time, resources, and knowledge in developing my curiosities and skills into tools I can use to explore the inner workings of the human brain.