Researcher | Research Overview
My research interests and expertise include constructing and applying novel neuroimaging methods to understand brain development, with an emphasis on cognitive, neuropsychiatric, and neurodevelopmental disorders. My current work, in collaboration with the Center of Brain Circuit Therapeutics at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, has leveraged ‘lesion network mapping’ and non-invasive neuromodulation to understand, diagnose, and treat symptoms seen in ASD, neurodevelopmental disorders, and intellectual disability.
Additionally, I have spearheaded efforts to develop new developmental age-related connectomes using publicly available data and continue to be actively engaged in developing high-quality, reproducible, and portable software tools to improve our ability to study brain development in children as Director of the Translational Neuroscience Center's new Data Organization Collaboration Service (DoCS).
Researcher | Research Background
I am a physician-scientist and Assistant Professor in the Department of Neurology at Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School. I received my B.A. in Biology and Biomedical Physics and my M.D. and Ph.D. degrees from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis where I focused on neuroimaging research that formed the basis for the Human Connectome Project. I then completed residency training in pediatrics and child neurology at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN and a clinical fellowship in pediatric behavioral neurology followed by a T32 postdoc fellowship translational research in neurodevelopmental disorders here at Boston Children’s Hospital.
My current research focuses on identifying which brain circuits are involved in specific symptoms seen in autism and other neurodevelopmental disorders using network neuroimaging techniques and coming up with ways to modulate these brain circuits with non-invasive neuromodulation such as TMS and real-time fMRI neurofeedback. My work has been supported by the Child Neurology Foundation, the National Institute of Mental Health, and the Simons Foundation Autism Research Initiative.
I also care for patients in the Autism Spectrum Center and Behavioral Neurology Clinic as part of the new multidisciplinary Brain, Mind, and Behavior Center at Two Brookline Place.