RAVEN - Team

I received my PhD in Psychology and Neuroscience from Temple University in 2019, after which I conducted my postdoc research at the Center for Lifespan Psychology at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin. In 2025, I began an Emmy Noether Independent Research Group at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development. My research aims to understand how children develop two kinds of memory: one that preserves the specific experiences of our past, and the other that accumulates generalizable knowledge and applies such knowledge to new situations. My research asks two main questions: What are the processes that support each kind of memory? And which changes in children’s brains explain their memory improvements? I examine how the building blocks of an adaptive memory assemble as children move from early to middle childhood by using behavioral and neuroimaging methods.

I received my PhD in Brain and Cognitive Sciences from the University of Rochester in 2023, where I studied visual perceptual decision-making. Through a series of experiments using both classic and novel stimuli, I explored how the brain makes perceptual decisions using reaction time (modeled via drift-diffusion models) and duration thresholds. I’m particularly interested in how these cognitive processes develop and change across the lifespan, with a growing focus on children and older adult populations. Prior to graduate school, I worked at Temple University on projects that examined memory development. Building on my initial interest in developmental cognitive science, my postdoc training will focus on the within-child changes in the neural bases of autobiographical memories from early to middle childhood.

I received my Bachelor’s degree in Psychology from Johannes Gutenberg-University in Mainz and my Master’s degrees in Mind and Brain as well as Psychology from Humboldt-University Berlin. My master’s thesis focused on noradrenergic neuromodulation and learning across the adult lifespan. Prior to joining RAVEN, I worked as a research assistant in studies of childhood memory development, where my interest in lifespan memory research originated. In my PhD, I will examine the relation between within-child changes in memory capacities in the laboratory and the real world.

I am a psychologist by training and obtained my MSc degree in Mind and Brain from Humboldt-University Berlin with a focus on Cognitive Neuroscience. In my master’s thesis, I examined the relative influence of perceptual and conceptual similarity on episodic memory. As a RAVEN, my dissertation will investigate the development of real-world autobiographical memory in children.