Hi, I'm Kathleen! I'm a second-year PhD student and NSF Graduate Research Fellow in the Harvard Program in Neuroscience, advised by Dr. Jordan Farrell. I'm excited about using approaches in systems and computational neuroscience to understand the neural basis of learning and memory and the role of sleep on these processes.

Past work

1. Sleep, dreams, and creativity: My undergraduate research at MIT with Prof. Bob Stickgold and Prof. Pattie Maes sought to understand how sleep and dreams affect waking cognition. We developed protocols for guiding dreams during sleep onset (NREM1) to study their impact on post-sleep creativity. To learn more about this work, please see my co-first author paper on hypnagogic dreams and creativity published in Scientific Reports, as well as feature articles about this work in Science, Scientific American, NIH Research Matters, and MIT News. I also recently presented a talk on this work at the 2024 Cognitive Neuroscience Society conference.
2. Visual perception: How do we perceive the world around us? My research on visual perception has focused on understanding the functional organization of the brain's visual system using large-scale neural recordings. As a 2017 Simons Summer Research Fellow in the lab of Prof. Il Memming Park at Stony Brook University, I characterized the neural activity of six regions of the visual system (for more, see my 2018 first-author paper in eNeuro and a video about the project). My work as a research intern at the Allen Institute with Dr. Stefan Mihalas centered on understanding representational drift in the visual system. I presented a poster on this work at COSYNE in March 2023 (more coming soon!).
3. Science, technology, and society: During my undergraduate years at MIT, I became super intrigued by the intersection of science and technology with society and policy, especially given the rapidly changing landscape of AI. Some of my past projects in this realm include conducting technical research for the AI Pedagogy Project and the Invisible Waves project as a summer researcher at metaLAB (at) Harvard, co-authoring the "CLeAR" documentation framework for AI transparency as an affiliate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, contributing to the World Economic Forum's "AI for Children Toolkit" as a member of their 2021 AI Youth Council, writing a storytelling series on milestones in tech history as a communications intern at the Patrick J. McGovern Foundation, and serving as the 2022 Executive Director of the MIT Science and Technology Policy Bootcamp.

Beyond the lab

Outside the lab, I love hiking, running, crossfit, ice skating, making art, and listening to a good audiobook. I'm also passionate about teaching, mentorship, and community building; I currently serve on the executive board of the Harvard Underrepresented Scholars in Neuroscience and had the privilege of leading several similar groups during my undergraduate years at MIT. Please reach out if you are interested in connecting!