I’m currently a PhD candidate at UCSD in the Comparative Cognition Lab. I study social interaction. I ask questions like: How do we humans organize ourselves? To affiliate? To understand each other? To act together? And how do these behavior develop? I focus on conversation, proxemics, and the norms that regulate social interactions. My approach to science prioritizes naturalistic observational methods. But I like to build tools and models too!
research projects
- how children learn social routine words surprisingly early and how do conversational norms (like conditional relevance) scaffold word learning (CogSci 2025 paper)
- how does children’s play start and end? (Phil. Trans. B paper)
- how conversational social norms influence spatial navigation? (in prep.)
- how does macaque monkey social rank influence social proximity? (CogSci 2025 paper)[video, project site]
Previously I studied Cognitive Science and Computer Science at Dartmouth College, built natural language understanding systems at Forge.AI, researched pedestrian-driver interactions at MIT to inform autonomous vehicle design, and an early employee at VideoAmp which replaces Nielsen by helping advertisers measure their video campaigns.