Kasandra is originally from the East Bay (Hayward), where she grew up with her three dogs and pet snake Kylie. During her undergraduate training, she studied Psychological and Brain sciences at UCSB, where she worked at the Keiflin lab studying sex differences in context-gated reward predictions. Kasandra also worked at the Kheirbek Lab, where she was interested in how emotional behaviors, particularly anxiety, are generated and regulated in the brain. Now, Kasandra is interested in understanding how aggregation of α-synuclein—a presynaptic protein critical for regulating neurotransmitter release—contributes to deficits in cognitive flexibility. In her free time, Kasandra likes to crowd surf concerts, and works at a military bootcamp (she’s a lagree instructor).