My research program is focused on defining how astrocyte networks organize communication across the nervous system and shape tissue responses to stress, degeneration, and changing physiological state. My work has helped establish that astrocytes are not passive support cells, but active, networked regulators of neuronal resilience and circuit-level adaptation. During my doctoral training, I demonstrated that astrocyte remodeling precedes overt axonopathy in glaucoma and that astrocyte gap-junctional networks redistribute metabolic resources during neurodegenerative stress, identifying glial connectivity as a mechanism that can mitigate injury while reshaping regional vulnerability. In my postdoctoral work at NYU Grossman School of Medicine, I developed new methods to trace and image astrocyte networks in intact tissue and used these approaches to discover that astrocytes form plastic, anatomically specific interregional networks across the brain. I further showed that unilateral retinal neurodegeneration elicits bilateral astrocyte responses in distributed brain regions, supporting a model in which astrocytes participate in systems-level adaptations to focal injury. These studies have advanced a new conceptual framework in which astrocytes function as organized multicellular networks that integrate local and long-range information across neural systems. I will begin my Assistant Professorship at Brown University in Spring 2027.