New Faculty Join Arts & Sciences

What is a piece of digital media, an ad, a video, a meme, that you think is doing something culturally significant that most people aren't noticing?

Cultural production around beauty and aesthetics in digital media is a space to which I pay critical attention, particularly in relation to meaning-making around the body, identity, and visibility. Social media has become a significant space where people reinforce, negotiate, and challenge contemporary cultural ideologies about which gendered and racialized visuals are considered attractive, entertaining, and therefore consumable. Commodification plays a key role in the production of aesthetic norms on social media. In my recent publication, for instance, I investigated how second-generation Asian American content creators perform the Asian Baby Girl (ABG) aesthetic on YouTube and how their content both reproduces and disrupts stereotypical norms surrounding Asianness.

What is something the neuroscience of learning has taught you about your own teaching that surprised you? 

What surprises me most is how strongly neuroscience confirms the importance of human connection in teaching. While I’ve always valued creating a warm and supportive classroom, the neuroscience of learning reinforces that psychological safety and belonging directly shape attention, engagement, and memory. Educational neuroscience has also influenced how I design learning experiences, strengthening my commitment to engaging multiple sensory systems to create richer retrieval cues and more robust memory formation. If I can add an olfactory cue to strengthen memory, I absolutely will!

What drew you to studying Rasopathies specifically? Was there a moment when this became the work you wanted to do?

I was drawn to studying RASopathies because there are so many questions, with real world implications, not yet answered. My research involves working with individuals affected by RASopathies, which means I get to learn from them about the kind of work that needs to be done to improve their quality of life and outcomes. While I can't pinpoint a definitive moment, I remember collecting data for my Master's thesis, which involved cognitive testing with preschoolers with NF1, and genuinely enjoying working the family, testing the children, and turning the data into a paper to help improve clinical trials rigor. Even though it was very early in grad school, I knew I had a lot to learn from the community and wanted to ensure that the work that I do translates into improvements in clinical care.

What do you see your role as when working with undergraduate students as they prepare to conduct their independent research projects? How do you support them?

I was once posed a question (presumably rhetorical) by a senior scientist with whom I worked: “If you haven’t communicated your science, have you done science?” This question strongly shaped my personal approach to my research and how I mentor undergraduate scientists. My role as a research advisor is to generate a space where student researchers can complete the “research arc” and proudly demonstrate a concrete product of their work.
I prioritize early discussions on importance of communicating one’s science and I work with my research students to identify opportunities where and when these students can communicate their work. With this target opportunity in mind, the student researcher and I work backwards to structure an experimental timeframe and then we brainstorm a series of testable questions that occupy the intersection of the student’s interest, my ability to advise on the science being conducted, and the available time we have.
I am an experimental ecologist with a research history examining how different parts of the environment (e.g., temperature, nutrients, microbes, herbivores) influence a plant’s capacity to survive, grow, and reproduce. I can best advise students on how to generate greenhouse or field studies that piece apart cause and effect and I love the challenge of working with students to craft elegantly designed experiments.