Experience Highlights

Designed, led, and published research on the conditions under which distracting sights and sounds automatically capture attention, resulting in 8+ publications in psychological journals.

Won awards totaling over $100,000 from organizations such as the National Science Foundation (NSF) and National Institutes of Health (NIH) for excellence in research.

Designed and translated in-person testing to fully online platforms, resulting in 10+ remote user research studies and 2 international collaborations.

As part of a multi-university collaboration, helped design testing batteries for measuring attention and memory in cancer patients undergoing brain tumor extraction.

Project Experience

2021 - PRESENT

Lead Researcher, Aging, Attention, & Memory        

Washington University in St. Louis    

At Washington University, conducted mixed-methods research that investigated potential indices of attention and memory deficits in older adults.

Tested how older adults vary in their ability to focus on a task, recall important task details, and minimize overall distraction.

Generated research reports; conducted data analysis; created data visualizations

Collaborative teamwork, ideation, prototyping, iteration

Administered demographic and health-related surveys 

Discussed elderly concerns regarding quality of life and caring for families as they approach or pass retirement age.

2017 - 2021

Researcher & Designer, Operation Patient Outcomes      

University of Michigan - Ann Arbor

Tested prototype tasks with patients and doctors and listened to their feedback.

Conducted usability testing, prototyping, and iteration to help develop an ergonomic controller that patients could easily use to complete testing tasks before, during, and after tumor extraction.

Observed how patients performed the task as part of the development process.

Interviewed medical team members to facilitate design development of the testing task battery.

Helped design a testing task battery for detecting critical attention- and memory-specific brain regions prior to tumor extraction in cancer patients.

Conducted longitudinal analyses that tracked changes in patient recovery and quality of life for up to 2 years post-operation.

Visualized longitudinal patient data to inform potential treatment plans for patients with similar cancer diagnoses.

2020

Researcher & Designer, The Cloud Project   

University of Michigan - Ann Arbor

Designed and programmed online versions of existing testing tasks used in patient testing (see Operation Patient Outcomes) and research studies

Programmed all tasks via a combination of Python, Javascript, HTML, and CSS

Listened to researchers and participants to gather feedback on task prototypes

Created surveys for each testing task to gather demographic and health information

Performed data analyses and visualizations to validate all task designs

2015 - 2021

Principal Investigator, Attention Capture         

University of Michigan - Ann Arbor                                                             

Conducted masters and doctoral research projects that explored when and why distracting sights and sounds automatically capture attention

Designed and executed research plans, project timelines, screeners

Worked in a team environment and delegated tasks as needed

Visualized research insights into concise and accessible presentations and reports

Communicated data findings via publications and conference presentations

Secured project funding and managed budget

Performed quantitative data analyses involving ANOVA, t-tests, regression

Independently planned and executed multi-year projects

Designed and programmed studies for both in-person and online data collection