I am a postdoctoral research fellow in Communication Sciences and Disorders at Boston University. My research is centered around characterizing social communication in autism: Understanding how people with different brains communicate can lead to improved conversations, relationships, and occupational success for all! My long-term goal is to improve our collective understanding of autism for these purposes, as well as to improve our recognition of underdiagnosed populations. 

Much of my research focuses on the measurement of pragmatic language (communication in social contexts) and prosody (cadence and tone of voice). My dissertation research, completed at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill with Dr. Clare Harrop, characterized prosody in those assigned female at birth. This research was supported by predoctoral fellowships from the Autism Science Foundation and the NIDCD (NRSA F31). 

As a late-diagnosed autistic woman, my personal and professional experiences have led me to be fascinated by how our speech and communication is influenced by our surroundings (where we are, who  we're with, what we're talking about or focusing on). As such, I am pursuing a line of research exploring how our communication changes across contexts, and what might influence that. 

In the Communication and Neurodevelopment Lab at Boston University, working with Dr. Jennifer Zuk, I am examining new contexts in which prosody plays an important role: speaking, narrating a story, and reading aloud!