Lecturer (Asst. Professor) at the Royal Veterinary College, University of London; AAAS Science & Technology Policy Fellow Alumna
My research integrates topics in neuroethology, sensory neurobiology, and engineering to investigate neural specialisations in sensory systems that facilitate locomotion. I am fascinated by the questions of how animals use different sensors to make sense of the world around them, how they have adapted specialised sensors or neural pathways to detect and use information from the external world in different ways, and what we might learn from these animals to design more efficient engineered systems. The primary tools I use are in vivo electrophysiology, immunohistochemistry & tract tracing, mocap, and other behaviour tracking techniques. Currently, I use avian and amphibian models to explore visual and tactile processing systems.
Outside of the lab, I am interested in ethical and legal questions raised by neuroscience research, novel biotechnologies, and brain-computer interfaces; in particular, how these technologies are evaluated in different legal forums.