I am Associate Professor in the Dept. of Philosophy, Core member of the Rotman Institute of Philosophy and Associate Member of the Brain and Mind Institute at Western. I have a PhD in HPS (2007) and an MS in Neuroscience (2003) from the University of Pittsburgh. While an MS student in neuroscience, I worked in a cognitive neurobiology laboratory and ran in vivo electrophysiology and biochemical experiments to investigate the role of a protein kinase (extracellular signal-regulated kinase (ERK)) in LTP in the rodent hippocampus. This experience sparked my interest in experiments and in philosophy of science in practice, and my published work f…
I am Associate Professor in the Dept. of Philosophy, Core member of the Rotman Institute of Philosophy and Associate Member of the Brain and Mind Institute at Western. I have a PhD in HPS (2007) and an MS in Neuroscience (2003) from the University of Pittsburgh. While an MS student in neuroscience, I worked in a cognitive neurobiology laboratory and ran in vivo electrophysiology and biochemical experiments to investigate the role of a protein kinase (extracellular signal-regulated kinase (ERK)) in LTP in the rodent hippocampus. This experience sparked my interest in experiments and in philosophy of science in practice, and my published work from 2008-present treats of a number of foundational issues concerning experimental practice in neuroscience with a particular focus on the neurosciences of cognition and those areas of neuroscience that investigate cognitive impairments that accompany mental illness and neurodegenerative disease. More recently, I am doing mixed-methods philosophy of neuroscience combining traditional analyses of historical and contemporary case studies, with collaborative work with translational cognitive neuroscientists, and qualitative methods including autoethnography, standard ethnography, semi-structured interviews, focus groups, and comparative qualitative analyses of multiple large-scale transdiciplinary research collaborations.