Vocal learning, or the ability to learn vocalizations from social companions, is a fundamental component of human language. This rare trait has also evolved in several phylogenetically distant mammalian and avian taxa. I am interested in how the social environment influences this cognitive trait. My research encompasses both functional and mechanistic questions with parrots and songbirds. I am currently working on how vocal learning may be used to communicate social information, and assessing epigenetic regulatory markers in the neural circuits important for this specialized form of social learning.
NSF postdoc fellow with Dr. Erich Jarvis at the Rockefeller University and Dr. Elizabeth Hobson at the University of Cincinnati working with a model songbird species. Finished my Ph.D. in 2020 with Dr. Tim Wright at New Mexico State University, in which we used an invasive parrot species as a natural experiment of genetic change and altered social environments. Graduated from Haverford College with a B.S. in Biology and Spanish.
