I’m an assistant professor of behavioral science at York College and The Graduate Center, CUNY (City University of New York), with previous stints as an assistant professor of psychology at Manchester University (IN) and adjunct instructor at Baruch College and Barnard College (NYC).

I earned my BA in psychology at New York University, conducting research in the Phelps lab. I further honed my research skills with Jason Mitchell at Harvard, before completing my PhD in neuroscience at Weill Cornell Medical College (NYC) with BJ Casey.

I teach undergraduate and graduate courses at York and The Graduate Center. I also run an NIH-funded psychophysiology lab at York where my students and I carry out research. In the lab, my students and I study emotional learning and memory processes, with a focus on classical fear conditioning as a model paradigm. Current studies are mostly centered around exploring factors that impact acquisition and regulation of conditioned fear.  A primary goal of the research is to understand the role that emotional learning processes and associated neural mechanisms play in the development of fear-related disorders such as PTSD and phobia, with the hope that this research will set the stage for better diagnosis and more effective clinical treatments.

Prior to entering academia, I spent many years as a professional touring and session musician.