About

I study hearing through cochlear implants.

I grew up north of Boston, USA and moved north of Chicago for my undergrad where I studied biomedical engineering and music cognition. Two degrees that had vastly little overlap and primarily evoked responses of ‘wow, those are very different’ and ‘you must never sleep…’ from fellow students. (They weren’t wholly wrong on either account.) Near the end of my degree, I was sitting in a Psychoacoustics class I was taking for my music degree when the professor described how the cochlea (the inner part of your ear) converted sounds from the time domain into the frequency domain through a very intricate biological process. She described the cochlea as like a rolled-up piano and indicated that it computed what is known as a Fourier Transform, for which she didn’t have a grasp on the maths, but the important thing was that it allowed us to distinguish different frequencies of sound from each other. I was floored – I had just learned how to do a Fourier Transform in my signals class (for my engineering degree) the previous week! I had found the common ground between my two seemingly disparate degrees, and knew there must be a career out there for me that allowed me to combine my interests.

After I graduated, I worked briefly for a start-up company in Chicago that was focusing at the time on alternative ways to programme cochlear-implant software to optimise for music perception. When the company shifted direction slightly and my student loans caught up with me, I switched gears and worked for a medical products company as an engineer for a few years. I gained invaluable experience working in industry and developed methods for applying multivariate process control systems to radio-frequency welding equipment used to manufacture I.V. bags. But I wanted to work with sound technology in some way, so I jumped at the chance to move to Cambridge, UK for a PhD focusing on cochlear implants.

I am currently a post-doctoral research associate at the University of Cambridge, working with Bob Carlyon at the MRC Cognition & Brain Sciences Unit. I am also a College Research Associate at Wolfson College. In the last few years I have held a CIND Early Career Researcher Award, a UKRI Impact Acceleration Award, and an RNID Innovation Seed Award. My research primarily focuses on electrophysiological measures of auditory perception in cochlear implant users, with a focus on optimisation of devices and mechanisms of pitch perception. I have a keen interest in conducting and supporting translatable research, and regularly collaborate with clinical colleagues based in the Emmeline Centre at Addenbrookes Hospital, as well as with colleagues in the UK and around the world in Australia, the US, Switzerland, and Germany.