Exploring wellbeing mechanisms & story-data interactions through research.
I research into the intersection of psychology and creativity to explore what makes us feel safe, connected, and alive. I’m fascinated by how memory, dreams, and early development shape our inner worlds, and how we can design creative systems to hold the parts we’re told to hide. By investigating the architectures of healing and belonging, I aim to bridge science and art to explore the invisible systems that shape how we relate to ourselves, others, and the stories we carry.
Dreaming, Memory & Two-Way Communication
At Northwestern’s Cognitive Neuroscience Lab, I investigated dreaming and waking life as interconnected cognitive systems: conducting overnight EEG studies, dream report analysis, and cross-disciplinary synthesis across neuroscience, psychology, and culture.​​​​
Lucid Dream Experiments and Coding
In the lab, I helped run overnight EEG experiments testing two-way communication with lucid dreamers. We delivered stimuli during REM sleep and decoded eye and facial signals in real time, challenging the idea that dreams are sealed-off experiences. I also tracked EEG shifts mid-dream and mapped them to participants’ recalled content, gathering evidence of the blurred boundary between brain signals and lived dream experience.​
Alongside this, I coded and analyzed hundreds of dream reports, using linguistic and quantitative tools (LIWC, JASP, etc.) as well as interpretive frameworks. By tagging variables like emotional tone, lucidity, false awakenings, and symbolic themes, we found that dream content systematically carried into waking life: e.g. nightmares predicted anxious mornings, false awakenings left traces of unease, while lucid dreams correlated with more positive, agentic states. Even subtle linguistic patterns (e.g. “I” versus “we”) predicted next-day mood, highlighting the continuity between dream narratives and waking affect.​​​
This research culminated in a review synthesis presentation on dreaming as a cross-disciplinary system, showing the intricate connections between dreaming and waking from the lenses of neuroscience, anthropology, psychoanalysis, and cultural history. From Schredl’s continuity hypothesis to Mallett’s studies of mood carryover, to Konkoly’s breakthroughs in real-time dream communication, the evidence pointed to the same truth: dreaming and waking are deeply interconnected. Cultures have always intuited this: from Mayan healing practices to Aboriginal Dreamtime and psychoanalytic interpretation. Science is only beginning to catch up.
Cross-Discplinary Synthesis: Story ↔ Data
I worked on an experimental opera and chamber work, Dream(e)scape, for Pierrot ensemble, electronics and soprano (performed by myself); and Corner for PRISM Quartet. The latter piece sonifies sleep data, while the former explores the fragile threshold between dreaming and waking, false awakenings, and the vivid dreamscapes of COVID. Oscillating textures, fragmented motifs, and suspended vocal lines were used to translate lucid states and memory reactivation into sound, rendering the invisible architectures of sleep cognition audible.​
In parallel, I conducted a digital ethnography of COVID dreams, analyzing dream-sharing across Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Facebook groups, and the I Dream of Covid archive. I traced collective themes: nightmares, contagion fears, masks, crowded spaces, but also longings for travel, intimacy, and community. These dream data points became both psychological insight and artistic material, a living archive of how crisis imprinted itself on the unconscious.​​
I found it tremendously interesting to investigate dreaming as a functional system influencing mood, learning, and creativity, and sleep as a dynamic portal for communication, adaptation, and cultural meaning.
Narrative Identity & the Psychology of Meaning
At Northwestern’s narrative identity lab, I worked on a narrative coding project investigating how people express hedonic (pleasure-based) vs. eudaimonic (meaning-based) happiness in personal life stories. Realizing that most happiness research relies on surveys, we built a narrative framework—analyzing how people talk about joy, growth, and meaning in their own words.​​
Coding Positive Accounts for Eudaimonic and Hedonic Happiness
I co-designed and implemented a 5-point framework to capture hedonic (pleasure, comfort, recognition) versus eudaimonic (growth, resilience, values, contribution) dimensions in personal narratives. Drawing on Aristotle’s ethics, Maslow’s hierarchy, and positive psychology, we developed detailed rubrics with inter-rater reliability training measures. Using this system, I coded and analyzed 160+ autobiographical memories from the T1 Life Story dataset, spanning childhood recollections to midlife “high points.” Each memory was scored line by line, transforming abstract constructs into codable psychological variables.
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Patterns revealed that people rarely used the word happy; instead, motivational architectures surfaced in how they framed their stories. Eudaimonic narratives emphasized becoming, resilience, or ethical action: “I grew into myself.” “I felt proud to help.” Hedonic narratives focused on thrill, comfort, or external validation: “Everyone applauded.” “I felt on top of the world.” Even subtle linguistic features (e.g., “I” vs. “we”) aligned with differences in well-being. This work showed that narrative meaning-making offers a unique lens on happiness: capturing how people embed purpose, growth, and legacy into identity, beyond what surveys can measure.​
This project gave me firsthand insight into how humans build meaning: how joy and pain coexist, how identity is shaped through language, and how well-being emerges as a narrative architecture. It shaped the way I now approach psychology, healing, and creative practice—informing my work designing immersive storytelling systems, emotional technologies, and music-based frameworks that explore how people make sense of themselves and one another through story.
TEDx Talk: Proposing A Framework for Respectful Creative Exchange
My TEDx talk, “Examining Cultural Appropriation Through Music,” explores what’s at stake when we sample across cultures beyond sound alone: context, power, and identity.​ Drawing from concepts in anthropology and ethnomusicology, I share a care-centered framework for creative exchange that prioritizes respect, empathy, and open dialogue; and unpack how music can travel in two very different ways: it can become “material” stripped of its people, or it can remain tethered to relationship, where listening is paired with accountability. The talk offers practical questions for artists and producers working across traditions: Who is being credited? Who is being compensated? What histories are being carried forward? Who gets to tell the story, and who gets flattened by it?
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Ultimately, this talk is an invitation to create work that is bold and grounded, to collaborate with humility, to honor the communities behind the sounds we love, and to make creative exchange a practice of deeper human connection. My hope is that we can build a future where creativity is grounded in curiosity, kindness, respect, and empathetic dialogue.
Networked Music Performance (NMP) Study: Adventures in [A]Synchrony
At Northwestern, I worked with Dr. Seth Adams and a team of orchestral performers to explore Networked Music Performance (NMP): a framework for real-time, low-latency collaboration using Soundjack to connect performers across distance. I helped design and prototype musical structures that could respond dynamically to network delay, signal flow, and human perception, treating latency not as an obstacle but as a compositional and expressive material.
I led creative discussions and developed the conceptual blueprint for our piece, shaping its focus on deep listening, flexible rhythm, guided improvisation, and meditative communication through sound. Alongside the ensemble, I experimented with microphone calibration, routing, and live monitoring setups to optimize clarity and presence in distributed space. This work attempted to bridge the technical and emotional: testing how milliseconds of latency could transform into new forms of musicmaking and shared time!
Through this project, I became fascinated by how music technology can amplify empathy and connection, how people separated by distance can still sense and synchronize with one another. That exploration continues to inform my work in music technology and emotional design, where I explore sound as both a connective system and a medium for healing and belonging.
Applied Psychology & Tech
During my internship at Littl, an early-stage tech startup in San Francisco, I worked at the intersection of developmental psychology and human-centered design to build tools that address parenting challenges. Collaborating with clinical psych professionals, we translated evidence-based research on emotional regulation, attachment, etc. into scalable, interactive resources used by parents across the U.S.
My role spanned content development, UX design, and product strategy. I helped design features that strengthened parent-child communication and reduced stress in early caregiving, while also working directly with the CEO and CMO to redesign the company’s engagement funnel and outreach strategies to better connect families with resources.
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What stayed with me most is how small design decisions ripple into the emotional climate of a home, and how technology can nurture connection, resilience, safety in human development. I want to continue exploring how psychology, design, and technology can converge to build futures where children and families feel secure, seen, and free to grow.
Blog
A blog of questions more than answers. Some musings on psychology, society, and the stories we carry.