This post is a bit late, but I am thrilled to share that I have started a new position as an Assistant Professor of Neurobiology in the Biology Department at Utah State University!

I’m about a month in to my first semester so far, and it’s going great! I’m making progress setting up my lab and already have three undergraduate student researchers who are interested in learning about the social brain.

I am teaching an upper-level, special topics course called ‘Behavioral Neurobiology’, which explores the evolved neural mechanisms of specific animal behaviors across a diverse range of species, such as echolocation in bats, singing in crickets and songbirds, learning and memory in honeybees, and spatial navigation in rats. It’s pretty neat to be teaching this, because I took the same course an undergraduate at the University of Virginia, and it was the reason why I decided to pursue a PhD in Neuroscience! It’s really incredible to come full circle and be teaching this class in my first semester as Assistant Professor.

The first several weeks so far have been beyond busy, of course, but I’ve also been able to connect with a bunch of great folks here at USU, including many other new tenure track Assistant Professors who will be heading along this same journey. The university administration, the higher-ups in the College of Science, and my colleagues in the Biology Department have all been incredibly helpful in getting me oriented here and making me feel supported and welcomed. I am looking forward to this new challenge and all the opportunities ahead of me!