I combine psychological theory with neuroscientific methods to understand how humans make adaptive decisions. My work focuses on safety decisions, which sit at the intersection of reward and threat processing, but are computationally distinct.

My research aims to identify neural circuits that underlie safety computing during adolescence and early adulthood. Neural systems relevant for recognizing safety mature during adolescence, and this neural maturation interacts with a changing and increasingly complex social landscape to lay the foundation for adaptive and aberrant decisions. An inability to accurately estimate safety also contributes to threat-related psychopathology such as anxiety, which affects 1 in 3 adolescents and 1 in 4 adults.