I am consultant at the World Bank's Water Global Practice (Monitoring and Evaluation and Gender Specialist): I work with multiple East African countries for projects in transboundary water resource management and green-grey water security/climate resilience. I recently completed consultancies for the US Sate Department's Office of Global Women's Issues where I performed data analytics, activity management, policy design, and capacity building (yes this is vague on purpose) and set up the MEL framework for USAID's INVEST project as the Impact and Evidence Manager at DAI. I am currently available for additional short-term consulting work.

I started Ripened Agrotech to develop intellectual property related to processes and technology used to generate specific new food products, created for specific populations (I'm conversational in patent speak).

AAAS Science & Technology Policy Fellowships (STPF) provide opportunities to outstanding scientists and engineers to learn first-hand about policy making while contributing their knowledge and analytical skills to the federal policy making process. I served two consecutive year-long assignments at the U.S. Agency for International Development.

My portfolio as a GEWE Advisor at USAID is a technically rich intersection of strategy, evaluation and GEWE integration. The contribution of women's engagement in the formal work force to macroeconomic growth is undeniable - I see my contribution as using better programming methodology, data and evaluations to better inform us of the "how" of development: to maximize sustainable impact, encourage equitable circumstances and learn from the mistakes. My current focus is on contributing to the business case for countering gender-based violence.

During my first year as an AAAS STPF I served as a Program Specialist in USAID's DCHA/DRG/Human Rights Office. My central project was to use a mixed methods analysis of the LGBTI human rights portfolio (combining stakeholder survey, key informant interviews and extensive quantitative data analytics) to devise and implement evidence-based operational strategy reform. Our analyses identified four sectors to target for capacity building and I provided guidance documents for Media and Security sectors.- additional actions included M&E field support, technical reviews of grant applications, developing Office internal and external engagement systems and coordinating one of the USAID-wide communities of practice.

As a founding faculty member, I helped create the first English-medium "Western-style" research university in the region. I was an Assistant Professor of Biology in the School of Science and Technology. In addition to creating and teaching many of the courses offered by the Biology Department I also drafted and reformed the undergraduate and graduate curricula, created the university's environmental health and safety system, established all research ethics policies and procedures, worked with contractors to design laboratories and animal facilities and helped to establish the baseline for risk management planning. The work I did on Responsible Conduct of Research and research ethics was packaged and provided to the Ministry of Education and Science and as model national system. Other activities involved establishing policies, procedures and systems for national science funding, educational quality assurance and more.I mentored many students and technicians in research including establishing a zebrafish model for ischemic stroke for drug discovery, nosocomial infection, neuroscience of risk perception, implementation of emergency therapeutic hypothermia and establishing a 5 country/7 institution collaboration to map Kazakhstan's seasonal soil microbiome (intending to lead to an climate change modeled agricultural value-chain analysis). Some news and social media articles about our research is below.https://yvision.kz/post/402719"Назарбаев Университетінің" ғалымдары инсультқа қарсы дәрі жасауда. https://www.nur.kz/229373-nazarbaev-universitetinin-galymdary-insultka-karsy-deri-zhasauda.htmlhttps://kaz.caravan.kz/news/nazarbaev-universitetinde-insult-bolghan-nauqastardyng-ongalyp-ketuine-mumkindik-tughyzatyn-darilik-preparat-zhasaluda-131584/http://control.edu.gov.kz/kk/news/dongelek-ustel-gylym-zhne-tehnologiyalar-etikasy-kazakstan-respublikasynda-damu-mseleleri-men

At PSU I was a postdoc in YingWei Mao's lab. I worked on harnessing the potential of induced neruons from pluripotent stem cells to model human neuropsychiatric disease and studied the relevance of ZNF804a on adult neural stem cell function.

I was a postdoc in Ron Davis's new lab at Scripps. I studied the bidirectional circuitry of dopaminergic regulation of forgetting in fruit flies. Using mutant flies with neurons that turn on or off depending on the temperature, we showed that forgetting a single-trial acquisition is indeed an active process in neuronal circuitry.

This was a fantastic opportunity to work under the direction of Mark Mattson (who now has over 700 peer-reviewed papers). I had an amazing experience studying the molecular basis of brain aging and neuronal plasticity.