About

I am a Research Scientist at Seattle Children's Research Institute in the Center for Integrative Brain Research. My research combines computational neuroscience and experimental circuit dissection to understand how opioids simultaneously affect breathing and pain — with the long-term goal of identifying strategies to preserve analgesia while preventing life-threatening respiratory depression.

I studied physics at Portland State before joining Mary Heinricher's lab at OHSU, where I first discovered the link between pain-facilitating RVM neurons and opioid-induced respiratory depression. I completed my Ph.D. through the NIH–University of New Hampshire joint program, working with Jeffrey Smith at NINDS to build data-driven computational models of the preBötzinger complex — work featured in an eLife Insight article. My postdoc with Jonathan Rubin at the University of Pittsburgh deepened my mathematical neuroscience toolkit, producing the first biophysical implementation of burstlet theory and models of basal ganglia dynamics.

At Seattle Children's, I'm bringing these threads together through my NIH K01 award (NIDA, 4th percentile), using Neuropixels recordings, fiber photometry, and intersectional genetics alongside biophysical modeling to dissect cell-type-specific mechanisms in the brainstem. I also build open-source software tools that bring modern ML approaches to physiology labs.