My research on social media and the brain takes place in the Cognitive & Affective Neuroscience of Psychopathology (CANoPy ) Lab at the University of New Mexico, where I’m pursuing a PhD in Cognition, Brain and Behavior. My work considers the neuropsychological effects of social media and spans the neuroscience of decision-making, addiction, isolation, attention and false beliefs. The study I am currently running explores the cognitive and behavioral effects of TikTok. In 2025, I received a student grant from the American Academy of Clinical Neuropsychology, and in 2024 and 2023 I received grants through UNM to study social media and the addictive aspects of its design.
On the journalism side, my work has been supported by grants and fellowships from the Fund for Investigative Journalism, the Banff Centre, the Johns Hopkins Good Science Project, Forecast Forum and the New England Foundation for the Arts. I have held residencies at MASS MoCA, Forecast Festival in Berlin, and SALT in Istanbul. I’ve spoken at the World Conference of Science Journalists about storytelling and at the Society of Environmental Journalists on the award-winning series I launched covering threats to America’s public lands. In 2022, a series I helped develop for the Guardian on America’s Water Crisis was recognized for excellence in data journalism and as one of Fast Company’s 2022 World Changing Ideas. In the 2018-19 academic year, I lectured on story craft in the journalism department at Northeastern University. A Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT in 2017-2018, I looked at the online spread of misinformation and how technology interacts with the brain. Before that, I could be found at The Guardian (US), Outside magazine, Here & Now, Gawker, the Salt Institute for Radio Documentary, 北大 and Northwestern University.