Professional Life

I am a first generation student with an absolute dedication to continue learning, continue thinking hard about research methods, and to promote good, ethical, and fair science. My parents’ only educational goal for me was to finish high school, and I continually shock myself that I've made it this far. My educational journey was slow while I simply worked to survive and I eventually discovered how to do what I wanted to do. I gained the confidence to pursue the career I enjoy and eventually the competence of how to pursue it.

While working full-time, I also attended Dallas County Community College and earned an A.S. degree before transferring to UT Dallas, and joined the Neuroscience Student Association (NSA) as soon as I arrived. NSA helped me find mentors and gave me the confidence to become a mentor myself. After a year of participating in the organization as a member I was elected Vice-President. As VP, NSA became my pride and joy: I invigorated our online presence, obtained volunteer opportunities for members to attend two local neuroscience conferences, and hosted events with medical students, grad students, and faculty to show our members the importance and utility of understanding research. After a year serving as VP, I became the President and I adapted our group for entirely virtual engagement with projects like a book club with free digital copies of neuroscience books provided by the authors.

As an undergrad I gained experience as a research assistant starting with The Texas Biomedical Device Center (TxBDC). My responsibilities consisted of managing the habituation, training, and care of animals for studying vagus nerve stimulation for motor recovery. This was my first experience with research and I was hooked, I arrived early and stayed late every chance I could to observe and learn about all other aspects of the lab. While there, I excelled at troubleshooting, started micro-construction of vagus stimulating devices, and observed surgeries, perfusions, motor mapping, and auditory mapping. I eventually left TxBDC with the opportunity to learn different skills in Dr. Price & Dr. Dussor’s Pain Lab under a work-study. In the Pain Lab I surgically removed trigeminal nerves from mice and cultured them for electrophysiology.

I have also obtained professional experience by interning for Ted’s Brain Science, an applied neuroscience company. Although my responsibilities started as simply managing wholesale accounts, I continued proving myself useful by attending and participating in several company meetings and performing data analysis and visualization. While working at Ted’s, one of the most beneficial experiences I had was when I helped write, compile, and submit a grant application.

After I graduated from UTD with a B.S. in Neuroscience I completed the Master's program in Applied Cognition and Neuroscience. Even though I was aware of how difficult a career in academia can be, I was still dedicated to continue studying reward and social behavior for the rest of my life. I was interested in learning methodologies across domains, so after my experience in animal and cellular research, I joined Dr. Filbey's NeuroImaging of Reward Dynamics (NiRD) Lab to develop human research skills. While there I started, managed, and completed two complete research projects: one examining the effects of transcutaneous auricular vagus nerve stimulation of executive function, and another studying the differences between medicinal and recreational canabis users. During that process I developed skills with neurocognitive testing, EEG, survey/analytical software like REDCap, and neurocognitive presentation software like PsychoPy and E-Prime, as well as non-methodological research skills like experimental design, writing IRB submissions and modification requests, managing a team, scheduling participants, learning proper statistical tests, and writing data extraction and analysis scripts in Python.

I sought to develop even more skills and expertise in social behavior after completing my Master's and joined Dr. Nancy Padilla-Coreano's Lab at the University of Florida. While there, I learned how efficient and effective a lab staffed with hard-working, invested, impressive people can be. I flourished in the collaborative environment and worked on multiple projects in a short time. My main project there dramatically improved my statistical and coding abilities while I completed multiple analyses of single-unit electrophysiology data recorded from mice during competition. Additionally, I studied optimal mice models of autism and collected pilot data and troubleshooted for a novel mouse cooperation task. This experience was invaluable in preparing me for the next step that brought me to a PhD in Dr. Raymundo Báez Mendoza's Social Neurobiology Lab at the German Primate Center (DPZ) here in Göttingen, Germany.

Here, I'm studying social valuation in marmosets, the best thesis possible for someone with my interests. I'm thankful for the kismet of finding a lab and supervisor that perfectly suits my core research interests in intrinsic and complex motivation, specifically through the lens of social behaviour. It allows me to start probing fundamental questions like: How much of any social animals’ social motivation is learned through the reward system, and how much is innate? If there are truly innate social motivation systems, how are they encoded, and if social motivations that appear innate are actually learned, how are those motivations learned and how are stimuli encoded to interact with the systems?

Please feel free to contact me to ask questions or talk about anything academic or professional