Neuroscience

  • Presently: Lecturer, University of British Columbia, Kwantlen Polytechnic University (currently not performing research, but that may change)
  • 2014-2017, Harvard University: Postdoctoral Fellowship with Dr. Joshua Buckholtz; CIHR Fellowship.
  • 2009-2014, University of British Columbia: PhD in Neuroscience with Dr. Catharine Winstanley; CIHR Doctoral Fellowship.
  • 2005-2009, University of Toronto: Honours BSc in Neuroscience; NSERC Undergraduate Summer Research Award; graduated with High Distinction.

My research interests are in the neurocircuitry and neurochemistry underlying individual differences in decision making. For my PhD, specifically, I studied cognitive effort: how we use it to obtain potentially larger rewards, why some (“hard workers”) are more willing to expend it than others (“slackers”), and the neuroscience that reflects this effortful decision making. For my post-doctoral fellowship, I examined the relationship between psychopathy, decision making, brain connectivity, brain activity, and criminal convictions in a population of incarcerated criminals.

These days, I spend most of my science time teaching neuroscience and psychology to undergraduate students, which is by far the most fulfilling and useful role I’ve ever had in university.

My science publications (feel free to email me for copies):

My research in the media/press:

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“Now one could say, at the risk of some superficiality, that there exist principally two types of scientists.  The ones, and they are rare, wish to understand the world, to know nature; the others, much more frequent, with to explain it.  The first are searching for truth, often with the knowledge that they will not attain it; the second strive for plausibility, for the achievement of an intellectually consistent, and hence successful, view of the world. … It is almost an intrinsic part of our concept of science that we never know enough.  At all times one could almost say that we can explain it all, but understand only very little.” – Erwin Chargaff, A Grammar of Biology from Voices in the Labyrinth

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