Vanessa was born and raised in the desert regions of Southern California and moved to the Bay Area to attend UC Berkeley, where she graduated with a BA in Psychology in 2017. During her time at UC Berkeley, Vanessa worked as a research assistant in Dr. Matthew Walker’s Sleep and Neuroimaging Lab, where she completed an honors thesis on how the physiological consequences of sleep deprivation mediate anxiety. Upon graduating, Vanessa became a research assistant in the Psychiatry Department at the University of California, San Francisco, where she first began working with clinical populations and focusing on cognitive function in depressed adults. In the lab, she is a research coordinator involved with the MR scans of the lab’s various studies. Vanessa’s research interests include behavioral and cognitive neuroscience, psychopharmacology, and psychopathology, and she intends to further develop her interests by pursuing a Ph.D. in neuroscience. Outside of the lab, Vanessa enjoys traveling, photographing friends, and spending any and all free time at Ocean Beach.
