My scientific path in neuroscience began with a master’s thesis driven by a deep interest in human health and disease. I investigated the therapeutic potential of natural and synthetic compounds for neurodegenerative disorders (NDs), work that seeded my long-standing focus on Machado-Joseph disease (MJD). Since then, I have systematically evaluated neuroprotective agents, quantifying their pharmacological actions and the cellular pathways they engage in animal models to prioritize candidates for MJD and other NDs. During my PhD, I developed a high-throughput, automated phenotypic analysis pipeline for rapid compound testing and used it to probe pharmacologic and genetic modulation of serotonergic signaling and mTOR inhibition as strategies to counteract HS-mediated proteotoxic damage. Screening a novel library (including imidazole and chromene scaffolds) yielded 19 compounds that significantly accelerated recovery in animal models. From this screen, we identified a particularly promising molecule that improved motor phenotypes and reduced ataxin-3 aggregation in an MJD model; this candidate is now being evaluated across additional neurodegenerative disease models. Currently, as a research assistant on “Challenging Current Models of Valence Encoding in the Mammalian Brain,” I am mapping the circuits that encode pleasure and aversion—bridging therapeutic discovery with systems neuroscience. I also bring expertise in confocal microscopy and animal welfare/ethics.