Faculty Member
Assistant Professor
Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences
University of California, Los Angeles
Personal Statement
I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences at UCLA and lead the UCLA Center for Autism Research and Treatment (CART) EEG Laboratory. My research seeks to understand the neural mechanisms underlying autism and related neurodevelopmental conditions across the lifespan, with the goal of identifying objective biomarkers that inform our understanding of brain development, function, and aging. My work has focused on using electrophysiological measures to investigate fundamental questions regarding brain function in autism. Early in my career, I used psychophysical paradigms and gamma-band electrophysiological measures to examine excitation–inhibition balance and inhibitory cortical processes underlying sensory perception. This work provided insight into neural mechanisms contributing to atypical sensory experiences in autism and established my interest in understanding how alterations in brain function emerge and evolve across development. Building on this foundation, I expanded my research to study early neural markers of autism during infancy. Using longitudinal EEG approaches, I identified alterations in functional connectivity, sensory processing, and brain maturation trajectories that precede clinical diagnosis and predict later developmental outcomes. I subsequently extended this work to genetically defined neurodevelopmental disorders, including Angelman syndrome and Bohring-Opitz syndrome, where electrophysiological biomarkers provided insight into syndrome-specific mechanisms of atypical brain development. Most recently, with support from a NIMH K01 Career Development Award, I have expanded my research program to include adulthood and aging. By integrating EEG, cognition, physical health assessments, wearable technologies, and epigenetic biomarkers, my current work investigates biological aging processes in autistic adults and seeks to identify factors associated with resilience and healthy aging. Across all stages of my career, a unifying goal has been to understand how brain function changes across the lifespan and how these changes contribute to variability in outcomes among individuals with neurodevelopmental conditions. My expertise in electrophysiology, biomarker development, longitudinal developmental neuroscience, and aging research uniquely positions me to contribute to the Brain Research Institute’s mission of advancing our understanding of the brain across development, health, and disease. My long-term goal is to establish a lifespan neuroscience framework that links early neurodevelopmental mechanisms to later-life health and aging outcomes, ultimately identifying biological pathways that contribute to resilience and vulnerability across the lifespan in autism and related neurodevelopmental conditions.
