I am a Senior Data Scientist at the Healthcare Transformation Institute (HTI), part of the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine. My main area of research in HTI is in medical ethics and health policy. Specifically, I focus on improving the risk adjustment algorithm for Medicare patients.

Previously, I worked in the Behavioral Intelligence division at Aware, where I analyzed human behavioral data from workplace collaboration platforms using natural language processing. I have also worked at Sonde Health, where I analyzed speech samples for health biomarkers to detect and monitor health conditions, such as Covid-19, asthma, COPD, and clinical depression.

I am also the Associate Director of The Erdős Institute, a career development program aimed at preparing graduate students and post-docs for data science positions in industry and entrepreneurship. My main tasks at Erdős include leading the Deep Learning bootcamp, the UX Research bootcamp, and the technical interview preparation portion of the Job Help program. For my mentorship in data science and music cognition, I was awarded the Early-Career Mentor Award from the Society of Music Perception and Cognition.

I earned my Ph.D. in Music (Theory, Cognition, and Perception) and an interdisciplinary specialization in Cognitive and Brain Sciences from The Ohio State University. My dissertation, “Subtle Semblances of Sorrow: Exploring Music, Emotional Theory, and Methodology,” explores how and why people perceive and experience emotions from music listening, with an emphasis on sad music. The dissertation incorporates a diverse set of methodologies, including behavioral research, a database she created of more than 20,000 musical stimuli, a new model of emotion, literature reviews, and multiple theoretical perspectives.

My music cognition research has been presented at national and international conferences and is published in Empirical Musicology Review, Human Technology, Humanities & Social Sciences Communications, Journal of New Music Research, Music & Science, Music Perception, and Psychomusicology: Music, Mind, and Brain. I was awarded the 2019 Aubrey Hickman Award from The Society for Education, Music, and Psychology Research (SEMPRE) for my work on emotion. This award is offered biennially to a graduate student submitting the best paper to SEMPRE’s international conference.

I co-founded the Music & Science Colloquium and Teaching Series (MASCATS), a symposium series aimed at promoting interdisciplinary research across the U.S. and Canada. The Future Directions of Music Cognition series extended the MASCATS vision to reach more than 1,000 people worldwide. As the co-chair of Future Directions, I organized a 2-day virtual conference and a series of 15 keynote lectures spread over four months.

For my MASCATS work and dissertation research, I have been awarded grants from the Ohio State Energy Partners, the Center for Cognitive and Brain Sciences, and the Alumni Grants for Graduate Research Scholarship. Other awards include the Graduate Achievement Award in Music Theory, the Helmholtz Award for Music Psychology, and a Distinguished University Fellowship for Graduate Studies.