Professional Bio

Katie is a first-year graduate student working with Dr. Suzy Scherf in the Laboratory of Developmental Neuroscience. She is enrolled in the dual-title Ph.D. program in Developmental Psychology and Social and Behavioral Neuroscience (SBN). Katie graduated with a B.A. in Neuroscience from The College of Wooster in 2022 and completed her Independent Study on the importance of the eyes in emotion recognition using ERPs under the mentorship of Dr. Grit Herzmann. She then worked as a Clinical Research Coordinator at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in both Dr. Eric Nelson’s and Dr. Kristen Hoskinson’s neuroimaging labs where she was able to work with populations of different chronic illnesses and psychiatric diagnoses. Here, she learned how to process and analyze structural and functional MRI data. Broadly, Katie is interested in the neural underpinnings of how people process facial expressions and where changes may occur during different developmental disorders, such as autism.