Faculty Directory

I received my BS in neuroscience with honors from the University of Pittsburgh (1997) and my PhD in neuroscience from the Department of Neuroscience and the Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition at the University of Pittsburgh (2004). From August 2004-2007 I has worked as a post-doctoral fellow in Dr. Geoffrey Schoenbuam’s lab. In 2007 I was promoted to assistant professor at University of Maryland School of Medicine and in 2009 I accepted a tenure-track position in the Department of Psychology and the Program in Neuroscience and Cognitive Science at the University of Maryland College Park. I received tenure in 2013 and am currently an associate professor. The goal of my research has been to investigate neural mechanisms underlying learning and decision-making, and their disturbance in addiction, aging, and schizophrenia. Specifically, I record single unit activity or dopamine release from various brain regions as rats perform a variety of cognitive tasks (e.g. reversal, delay discounting, stop-signal, set-shifting, conflict) and evaluate loss of function after pharmacological or optogenetic manipulation. I completed my dissertation work in the lab of Dr. Carl Olson in the Department of Neuroscience (CNUP) and the Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition (CNBC) at the University of Pittsburgh. There, I recorded from single neurons in several areas in primate frontal and medial cortex during performance of conflict and reward based saccade tasks. After graduating, I accepted a position as post-doctoral fellow on the Cellular and Integrative Neuroscience Post-Doctoral Training Grant at the University of Maryland Medical School under the advisement of Dr. Geoff Schoenbaum. There I continued my work on reward-guided decision-making and started examining issues related to addiction, aging, and schizophrenia, work that has continued in my lab in College Park.

Research examples

Neural and Behavioral Consequences of Drug Abuse during Decision-Making

• Neural mechanisms underlying learning and decision-making, and their disturbance in addiction, aging, and schizophrenia