Hi! I'm Kathleen. I graduated in May 2023 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a Bachelor of Science in Computation and Cognition (a joint major in computer science and neuroscience). This fall, I will begin my PhD in Neuroscience at the Harvard Program in Neuroscience, supported by a NSF Graduate Research Fellowship.

I am fascinated by brain, especially the neuroscience behind sleep and dreams. My research has sought to understand how sleep and dreams affect waking cognition, with a focus on enhancing creativity by guiding dreams during sleep onset. Please check out my recent paper on hypnagogic dreams and creativity, published in Scientific Reports, here. The paper was also covered by journalists at Science, Scientific American, and MIT News.

I am also curious about how we perceive the world around us. My research on this front has focused on understanding the functional organization of the brain's visual system using large-scale neural recordings. As a 2017 Simons Summer Research Fellow at Stony Brook University, I characterized the neural activity of six regions of the visual system (see my 2018 paper in eNeuro here, and a video about the work here). My ongoing work, presented at COSYNE 2023, centers on understanding representational drift in the visual system.

You can read more about me in this interview about my internship at the Allen Institute and this interview about my paricipation in the "Poetry of Science" initiative.

Please contact me via email with questions and opportunities! I am particularly interested in: scientific collaborations, scientific advising and consulting, intersections between science and art, and science communications. My areas of experience and expertise include: systems neuroscience, sleep and dreams, data science and visualization, and AI policy. I'd love to hear from you if you think we could have something interesting to talk about or if you think I could be a good fit for your team!