Ever since my first quarter in undergrad, I knew I wanted to be a memory researcher. Initially it was from a cognitive psychology perspective since I did not know too much about neuroscience at the time. However, I approached the professor of our Human Memory and Learning course, Dr. Charan Ranganath, and was excited to be granted an internship in his lab. The Ranganath lab was the perfect opportunity for me to shape my research interests, as the main focus was the cognitive neuroscience of human memory. I was working mainly on a memory project relating to an educational psychology theory called the pretesting effect, where individuals who study information prior to learning it have better long-term memory of the event. This project was purely behavioral, so I also helped with collecting data for fMRI projects assessing event segmentation. 

After working with the Ranganath lab for many years on these different projects, I knew I wanted to use neuroimaging to assess how different factors influence memory in humans, but still needed guidance from other experiences. I worked in the UC Davis Sleep Lab for a quarter, which gave me experience with EEG and allowed me to think about how sleep affects cognition. However, in undergrad I also worked with the Luck Lab on a project quantifying visual and conceptual similarity and seeing how that affects visual working memory performance. This led me to a question I hope to answer on a psychological or conceptual level: how do attentional processes in the brain correspond to working memory, then later how these aspects of cognition influence long-term memory. 

Now I have graduated and am working in the neuroscience department at UC Berkeley. This question I first raised on attention and memory has become more refined neuroscientifically into how dopamine influences long-term memory, as this neurotransmitter is at play in all three forms of cognition earlier stated. This idea was one I had for a while, as I had been writing popular science articles on dopaminergic explanations for memory, both short-term and long, however I did not realize its true potential until working at Berkeley. In my current position, I am working on a project that uses PET neuroimaging to assess dopaminergic release in humans before completing social decision making tasks. This experience led me to really consider studying dopaminergic explanations for memory in human populations.

I am currently in the process of applying to Ph.D. programs in neuroscience and psychology to hopefully pursue a career in cognitive neuroscience. Additionally, during my free time, I provide resources and opportunities to students that want to pursue academia.