hire me!

Hey, you’ve made it to my hire me page. WOW! Thanks for visiting. Here, I’d like to share more about myself, but in a tone that’s more casual… as those applications are so formal! So here are some ramblings:

My research in a nutshell

My research blends cognitive neuroscience with network science methodology. I firmly believe that we cannot understand any brain area in isolation. Structurally, an area has a unique pattern of connections to the rest of the brain (sometimes referred to as a connectivity fingerprint; see this awesome paper: The anatomical basis of functional localization in the cortex). And functionally, we can observe a rich, and mostly reliable (but sometimes not), functional organization across areas. A brain area has its structural and functional network context—and analyzing this context can offer important insights and predictions. In my forward-looking research activities, I want to focus on how the dynamic distributed organization changes, and how these changes coincide with cognitive context, especially in regards to attention (and to a related capacity, cognitive control). Whereas the GLM has been so vital in understanding where brain areas respond to certain contexts or stimuli, we don’t have as good of an understanding of how dynamic reconfigurations reliably change. Even though time-varying connectivity research has been lively for the past few years, we have yet to fully harness its features for understanding cognition as it unfolds (IMHO; but indeed, there are stellar colleagues who are working on this—not to discount them!). Further, I am quite convinced that using naturalistic stimuli is a powerful approach for studying cognition. Although we don’t get the isolation of a traditional cog-neuro paradigm, it allows us to study the brain using that is closer to its daily function.

A future project I want to build towards

On a related note, I am convinced that there ought to be a large subfield of neuroimaging focused on imaging acute social media use. At present, scientists have run cross-sectional studies relating screen use (and related constructs) to brain measurement, to get at the brain-behavior relationship here. I would like to pursue work at the other end of the methodological spectrum—to study individuals’ acute experiences while interacting with digital media. What does the brain look like as we engage in spontaneous scrolling behavior, and why do we (generally) feel compelled to do this in our lives, all the time, even though at a high level we know we should be on our phones less? What are the dynamics of attention, reward, social valuation, and arousal as we are on our phones? And how is this behavior distorting our time perception so much? Are we in flow? I think answering some of these questions would not only be extremely interesting for so many of us habitual social media checkers (and funding agencies!), but also I think such answers can help us better understand adolescent development today. I personally worry about what children’s development looks like in a world of seemingly addictive screens, and I think we ought to study the acute experience in the scanner!

More research, more networks

I sort of love networks. I just really think they are awesome. And helpful to describe a wide range of systems and level of complexities. I would be so happy to collaborate to share my knowledge. Additionally, I also an interested in expanding my own network of collaborators. If you are tired of the whole networks shtick, I get it… I’ve been pretty repetitive here in my affection. I also have a lot of offer as a colleague and collaborator who enjoys thinking about computational problems and cognitive quandaries in general. I’ve picked up a bit of experience in signal processing too, especially in my postdoc. As always, happy to share!

How I strive to lead with niceness

I’ve written substantially in my materials about how I value feedback, communication, and creativity. Here, I’d like to add a bit of a complaint, coupled with some positive forward-looking: Far too often you hear about unfortunate behavior in academia. I hate to say it, but there exist some real horror stories perpetuated by people in positions of power. Often, I think it boils down to some faculty being downright unreasonable, and not having a good grasp of how to be adaptable, open, or congenial. And I don’t mean to generalize here, as the overwhelming majority of my time in academia has been enriched by interactions with brilliant, nice, and fantastic people. But I must point out, the bad apples really stink. And unfortunately, in some instances, there exists a culture to tolerate these bad apples, enabling them to continue such behavior. I want to make it clear here that I am an advocate for congeniality, and I pledge to do my best to protect those who are not in positions of power. I’m attracted to a career in science in part because it’s a social, team endeavor. I really get a kick out of working with others positively and productively. On the flip side, behaviors like yelling at people (especially students), making public displays of nasty disagreements, or even feuding with your colleagues are rude and counterproductive. It’s not my style, and I strive to steer communities away from this type of behavior. Anyway, thanks for reading my little rant here! It feels like it should be obvious, but I think it’s worth reiterating! Being congenial is the way to go!