I received my bachelor's degree in Microbiology from Ohio Wesleyan University and my doctorate in Neurobiology from the University of Alabama at Birmingham. My thesis research focused on cellular signaling mechanisms in animal models of mood disorders. Following graduate school, I completed a postdoc in Dr. Julie Kauer's lab at Brown University. My postdoctoral research focused on long-lasting effects of acute stress on inhibitory synapses in the ventral tegmental area and was supported by a NARSAD Young Investigator award and a K99/R00 award from the National Institutes of Mental Health. I began my own lab at George Washington University in 2017, where my research focuses on synaptic and circuit-level effects of stress and adversity, and how these are modulated by factors such as sex and age.