I started as assistant professor in Neurobiology in 2023. My research focusses on the behavioural and neural mechanisms of auditory-vocal learning and memory in songbirds, as a model for human speech acquisition. During my PhD, I studied neural activity in juvenile songbirds during the song learning phase using immediate early gene expression (with Johan Bolhuis, Utrecht University). During my postdoctoral projects, I recorded neural activity during sleep using in vivo calcium imaging (with Tim Gardner, Boston University), manipulated neural activity through local pharmacological infusions and monitored the effects on song performance (with Mimi Kao, Tufts University), and I made local, small injections of anatomical tracers to study neural connectivity.