About

I am currently a UX Researcher in the Remote Presence division of Messenger & Instagram at Meta (Facebook) where I conduct generative, strategic, and tactical qualitative and quantitate research in a cutting-edge product space and empowers the product teams I work with to fulfill our mission to enable people feel more together when apart.

Previously, I was a Visiting Researcher at Microsoft Research conducting user-centered human computer interaction research with a focus on Virtual Reality and Spatial Computing. Prior to my appointment at Microsoft, I was a Postdoctoral Scholar in the Division of Biology & Biological Engineering at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) where I have been conducting both applied and basic research on the plasticity of human perceptual systems in the visually impaired, with a focus on developing or improving assistive technologies. Some of my work in this area has focused on how the senses come together to create our experience of reality and has examined whether we can tap into the brain’s capacity for rapid adaptation to enable blind users to truly ‘see with their ears’.   

With a formal background in psychology and neuroscience, and a personal fascination with spatial computing technologies, my research explores how we can utilize virtual and augmented reality technologies to better understand human cognition and neurobiology, as well as the flip side of that coin; how we can leverage what we know about human cognition and neurobiology to take the experience of virtual/augmented reality to the next level.  

I received my Ph.D in Neuroscience from the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden in 2016, where I worked in Henrik Ehrsson's Brain, Body and Self Lab conducting human-subjects experiments investigating the role of mental imagery in human perception, and the neural processes involved in constructing a coherent perception of the world around us and of ourselves. Prior to my doctoral studies, I graduated from San Francisco State University's Department of Psychology, with my M.A. in Psychological Research (Mind, Brain, and Behavior) in May of 2010. During my master's I worked in  Dr. Ezequiel Morsella's Action and Consciousness Lab investigating (a) the complex relationship between action and awareness and (b) people's lay intuitions regarding the nature of action and psychological processes.

My work has made use of a variety of quantitative and qualitative behavioral and neuroimaging techniques to investigate questions such as whether we can tap into brain plasticity to improve the perceptual experience of low-fidelity virtual environments in VR; whether haptic feedback from controllers in VR can create novel tactile sensations that cannot be experienced in the real world; whether whether false feedback from a brain computer interface can elicit illusory intentions; whether mental imagery can alter veridical cross-modal sensory perception via multisensory integration; and whether cross-modal brain plasticity can be induced from imagined sensory stimuli. My work has sometimes even generated media interest—check out the Media page for more!