Emma received her PhD from the University of Alabama at Birmingham in 2024, where she studied alternative splicing in the mammalian brain using long-read and single-nucleus RNA sequencing. Emma is originally from Northern California and graduated from California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt with a psychology BA and a studio art minor in 2019. She joined the Dougherty Lab in 2025 to use transcriptomics to understand how neurodevelopmental and psychiatric disorder-related mutations change the brain. Emma enjoys spending time with her pets (two cats and one dog), trivia, reading, hiking, camping, cooking, playing video games, and singing karaoke in her free time.