I am a Research Investigator (PI) in the Audiology and Speech Pathology Center at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, MD. I am also an affiliate faculty member of the Applied Research Lab for Intelligence and Security (ARLIS) and the Department of Hearing and Speech Sciences (HESP) at UMD. I completed my Ph.D. in Psychology at the University of Illinois and postdoctoral training in the Hearing Research Program at the Medical University of South Carolina. Using neuroimaging and pupillometry techniques, I investigate the sensory and attention systems that support language understanding in adverse conditions. I conduct much of this work at the Maryland Neuroimaging Center (MNC) at UMD. A primary focus of my work aims to mitigate the speech-recognition challenges faced by older adults with hearing loss through interventions that optimize both comprehension accuracy and cognitive effort.