About Me
Ph.D., Harvard University, 2017
B.A., Yale University, 2008
As of July 2017, I am an Assistant Professor in New York University's Department of Psychology. Please see my NYU faculty webpage and lab webpage for the most up-to-date information about my work.
How does the physical world in which we live shape the abstract world in which we think? I address this question by exploring the development of uniquely human geometric understanding — from the basic spatial sensitivities of infants to the high-level spatial concepts of adults. I also broaden and deepen this exploration to ask how mathematical formalisms might have been ignited in the first geometers like Euclid and how they might be reignited in the minds of our children, those future mathematicians we send to school every day. In addition, I ask how our basic mechanisms of spatial perception and cognition might have even shaped our cultural development throughout historical time, such as the production of pictorial art, by investigating the geometry in children’s drawings.