Postdoctoral Fellow in the Biobehavioral Pain Research LaboratoryThis email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

I received my Master’s in Experimental Psychology (recently renamed Behavioral and Brain Sciences) from the University of South Alabama with a focus on embodied cognition via proprioception and visual perception of the brain-body interaction in 2012. I also received my Ph.D. in Rehabilitation Science from the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) in 2017, where my doctoral work expanded my work on embodied cognition by examining key motor deficits of the impaired nervous system via bio-mechanical, proprioceptive, and health-rehabilitation psychological factors- my thesis work identified gait dynamics (i.e., gait variability) and speed selection self-efficacy in individuals with chronic post-stroke (PS) hemiparesis as a potential mechanism by which environmental demands may interact with the hemiparetic condition to reduce walking speed, suggesting that speed deficit may reflect adaptation to reduce susceptibility to speed-induced missteps.

I joined Dr. Burel Goodin's lab in 2019 as a postdoctoral fellow and I am currently examining the interplay of physical function and other potential risk factors/antecedents in individuals with chronic low back pain (cLBP). Overall, my program of research investigates the interplay of health conditions, proprioception, motor control, and bio-psychosocial factors. It is my mission to increase public awareness of the importance of health conditions like cLBP and PS and meet the following long-term goals:

1. identify bio-psychosocial mechanisms that underlie the relationships between risk factors / antecedents of pain and other health conditions,
2. examine the impact of pain and other health conditions on motor control and proprioception, and
3. determine if there are differences in these bio-psychosocial and proprioceptive mechanisms that may explain disparities in pain across vulnerable groups.

I have spent the past ten years developing this career trajectory by pursuing research training in the science of motor control, behavioral health psychology, and pain.