I grew up in a suburb of Philadelphia, then headed north to New Haven, where I majored in Biophysics and Biochemistry at Yale. I subsequently completed a Ph.D. thesis with Jim Hudspeth at The Rockefeller University, studying the properties of signal transmission at the first synapse in the auditory system with paired patch-clamp recordings. After graduating from medical school at Cornell, I stayed at Rockefeller for an additional year to work with Jeff Friedman on a neuroimaging study that explores the influence of shifts in metabolic state on the experience of anxiety in human subjects.
My interest in the relationship between neurobiology and behavior led me to pursue residency training in psychiatry. While here, I plan to study, at the circuit level, the pathways involved in initiating and perpetuating psychiatric disorders, with the goal of identifying biomarkers and novel therapeutic approaches to help guide our diagnosis and treatment of these illnesses.
