(née Collard)

I’m working on my MD/PhD in Neuroscience at UCSF. I study computations in astrocytes (another 1/3 of the brain, aside from neurons) and how language models understand facets of our mental health, in their own idiosyncratic way.

I’m interested in understanding the architecture and dynamics of world-knowledge—in human brains, non-human brains, non-brain biological systems, artificial systems, collectives, and aliens—in a substrate-independent way. I hope that developing this understanding can break psychiatry out of its current local minimum, because a large body of empirical evidence demonstrates that our experience is largely shaped by unconscious world-knowledge. I believe that mental healthcare should be centered around being an ally with someone as they envision a possible good future for their inner and outer worlds, and as they then start building a path of attainable actions that help move those inner and outer worlds from their present state toward that good future. (Perhaps Freud was in the business of plausible fiction, even though he didn’t know it!)

Since I was first introduced to the topic in 2012, I have felt a vibe that category theory could be a helpful language for phrasing an understanding of this kind in a way that facilitates precise communication of the core essence of ideas, and that suggests in form interesting questions to ask. This vibe is not yet representable to me, but a future I think is good is one in which that is different.