Physical Sciences
Specialized Medical High School
Pre-med at the University of Pennsylvania
Student Organic Chemist
Research Technician in a Neuroscience Lab
Basic Understanding of EEG and fMRI
a circuitous career path
Before I was aware that music cognition or data science existed, I thought I was going to be a physician or chemist. I attended the Academy of Allied Health and Science, a magnet high school which contains a specialized curriculum geared towards students who wish to pursue a career in the medical sciences. During this program, I took part in a neurosurgery mentorship program, where I observed surgeries and clinical visits in a one-on-one setting with a neurosurgeon.
I followed a pre-med track throughout college, completing courses and corresponding labs in molecular and cellular biology, organismal biology, biostatistics, organic and general chemistry, and physics. While at the University of Pennsylvania, I worked as a private chemistry tutor and won the CRC Outstanding Freshman Chemistry Award, which is given to two students out of all the general chemistry classes for outstanding work.
During two summers, I worked as a student organic chemist at International Flavors and Fragrances (IFF). While at IFF, I worked in the fragrant ingredient synthesis laboratories of Tony Levorse and Ben Amorelli. My projects included synthesizing original chemicals to be used in perfumes, analyzing the results of the reactions using GCMS and NMR, performing fractional vacuum distillation for purification, submitting molecules for odor evaluation, and presenting the results to the Research and Development team.
After graduating college, I continued my work on fragrance as a research technician in the neuroscience lab of Joel Mainland at the Monell Chemical Senses Center. At Monell, I researched, designed, and executed human psychophysical experiments to determine how humans perceive odor. My primary projects can be described as (1) predicting odorant-mixture perceptual similarity from odorant-mixture structure with varied odor intensities, and (2) investigating the relationship between odorants and their physiochemical properties.
While in graduate school, I spent a summer as a visiting researcher in the Social Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory of Jean Decety at the University of Chicago. During my time in Chicago, Lindsay helped conduct research on developmental social neuroscience on sensitivity to fairness and distributive justice in preschool children using EEG and behavioral tasks. While at OSU, I audited a class on basic fMRI and fNIRS methodology taught by Yune Lee.