Who I Am

My PhD research looked at how speakers of different languages process words. As a faculty member, I ran a pediatric reading lab. Today I work in cardiovascular AI, a field I never expected to find myself in.

From the outside, the last move looks like the big one, and in many ways it was. But by then, years of smaller decisions about funding, collaborations, and what was practical for my life had already carried me a long way from where I started, each one reasonable on its own.

The hardest stretch was my time as faculty during the pandemic. I was teaching online, trying to grow a research program, and supporting my lab through constant uncertainty, and I often felt pulled in more directions than I could manage, without a clear sense of what mattered most. That stretch was a big part of why I eventually left. The reasons were both professional and personal, and protecting my mental health was one of the most important.

Moving into AI brought a different set of challenges, like learning a new field and adjusting to new ways of working. The one that taught me the most was figuring out how to enjoy the process of scientific discovery when the questions I was answering were so different from the ones I started with. What I found was that the thread running through my career was never a particular topic, but the experience of working through a hard question and seeing something new come into focus.

That’s what I write and speak about now: research drift, career identity, and what it means to build an intentional research life. I also work with postdocs and early-career researchers who are in the middle of their own transitions.

I live in Chicago with my husband. Outside of work, I paint, study Italian, and try to practice the kind of intentional rest I write about.