About

I am a strategist, scientist, and former academic researcher in biomedical engineering. I treat complex systems as intriguing puzzles to understand, explain, and solve.

I earned my PhD in Biomedical Engineering with a collaborative specialization in neuroscience at the University of Toronto and conducted my research at Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital. As an academic, I researched the role of sensory feedback in motor control, with focuses in speech development and paediatric rehabilitation. I studied models of speech and hearing, built technologies for clinical settings, and developed ways to make therapy fun and effective. You may have read about my work in Smithsonian Magazine, heard it mentioned on the podcast 99% Invisible, or seen me featured in hEr VOLUTION’s #CanWomenSTEM150 campaign.

I am also interested in the reliability and validity of measures, both those that are used in research and those that we encounter day to day. How can we be certain that a tool fully measures the construct it’s meant to, and how consistently can it be applied? How do these measures impact what we think we know about a system?

Now that I’ve left academia, I ask similar questions as I tackle complex systems of a different kind – trustworthy public sector policies and programs. I make design and delivery more effective and efficient by asking questions, gathering evidence, and creating principles-based tools for implementation. From a scientific lens, the work isn’t so different from developing conceptual models and fast-tracking them into testing, iterating and improving for the benefit of the user.

This website showcases my academic portfolio and will give you a sense of how I find creative, elegant solutions for tricky problems.