well its officially official - I graduated yesterday! 🎓 super honored to have also received my department’s promise award in brain science research. pumped to start my postdoc next month!!

defended my dissertation and officially became Dr. Townsend yesterday! 🍾 feeling so much gratitude for my friends and family, my wonderful advisor, the bluesky-less Kyle Smith, and the many mentors & colleagues who supported me along the way 🩷

despite the horrors, I will continue to share and engage with science without fear!! thus, I'm very happy to share my recent article out in Learning & Memory. I'm so proud of this work. it's been my little passion project for some time now. a student of mine, Angela Shang, even made the cover art!

if you are interested in behavioral microstructures of motivation, come check out my SfN poster today at board JJ8! we explore sign-tracking responses in depth, favoring detailed analysis of video behavior over automatic readouts (eg, presses per min). come check it out and talk behavior! ☺️

using my first bluesky post to say that i officially started my dissertation process and i am ABD 🥂🥳