Hello! I am a postdoctoral researcher in the Emotion & Self Control Lab in the Psychology department of the University of Michigan. I completed my PhD in the Environmental Neuroscience Lab at the University of Chicago. I am interested in how the physical environment influences cognition, emotions, behavior, and wellbeing, and the mechanisms of these effects. Specifically, I focus on the influence of natural environments across the urban to rural gradient. I combine experimental psychology methods with spatial data science using big, open datasets in my research.

Reseach Questions

• How does one’s surrounding environment influence who and what they think about?
• What environmental features shape these cognitive and social effects?
• How do neighborhood level physical and social environments affect crime and mental health?

Broader Impacts

In an effort to help city-dwellers experience natural stimuli on their daily lives, I co-developed a web-app called ReTUNE which generates ‘restorative’ walking routes which account for greenspace, noise levels and crime. The app currently works in pilot form for Chicago and is in the process of being expanded.

Open Science

Check out my Open Science Framework page for shared stimuli, datasets, and analysis code!