I’ve always wanted my scientific work to be tied to larger societal issues, such as our current mental health crisis. That’s why I joined Moriel Zelikowsky’s lab, where everyone focuses on how different kinds of stress can affect behavior. I was drawn to a project about social instability stress, which is when the people lack a stable social circle. The foster care system is one of many examples of this. Anecdotally, we know that these experiences negatively affect children, especially as they’re developing. But we don’t have a ton of research—human or non-human—to support that.

This issue has always been near and dear to my heart. My dad and his siblings grew up in the foster care system and experienced a lot of that instability. I’ve seen how it affects them in different ways, and my family has always been willing to talk about the hard parts of life. Having those honest conversations, even when I was really young, made me understand how early  childhood adversities affect the entirety of your adult life. I think that’s what ties together my personal experiences and the science that I do.

When I first got here, I ran an experiment looking at social instability and how it affected rodent behavior. I’ve been running with it ever since and I really, really love it. I love being able to talk about the hard science of working with the mice, the neurobiology that underpins the parts of the brain affected by stress, and the signaling systems that might be involved. But also get a chance to inform people. A lot of people consider the U.S. foster care system as something separate from general society. But it’s a massive, massive system and most people don’t know how it works, how many children it oversees and how those children’s lives are impacted by it. Everyone is impacted by the U.S. foster care system, regardless of whether you have been a part of it in any way, shape, or form.

Mice are incredibly social animals. They thrive when they have a large community, and they really struggle when they are isolated. I look at these mice who have experienced chronic social instability as juveniles and see how their social interactions with other mice get disrupted. It makes me think about how we’re so quick to judge people who have experienced social instability, be it the foster care system, or even divorce and displacement from a natural disaster. It’s easy to look at statistics and think, ‘These people are this percent more likely to engage in violent crime or to be imprisoned.’ It’s also important to understand where they’re coming from. You have to have opportunities to engage with people for extended periods of time to build different life skills. I think research gives us an opportunity to understand people a little bit better and to further develop our empathy.