Melany (she/her/hers) graduated from Northwestern University in 2025 with a B.A in Neuroscience and Psychology. As an undergraduate, she worked in Dr. Sandra Waxman’s Infant and Child Development Center and Dr. Elizabeth Norton’s Language, Education, and Reading Neuroscience (LEARN) lab. She also completed summer internships in Dr. Laurel Gabard-Durnam’s Plasticity in Neurodevelopment (PINE) Lab and Dr. Julio Fernandez-Mendoza’s Sleep Research and Treatment Center. During her post-baccalaureate training, Melany worked as a Research Assistant for the HEALthy Brain and Child Development (HBCD) study, where she primarily collected EEG and MRI data from infants and toddlers. She is keenly interested integrating multimodal approaches to better understand the neural mechanisms underlying language development, with the goal of eventually developing interventions to mitigate the effects of early risk factors. Outside of research, Melany loves to cook, dance, and take long strolls around the city.