I am the Scientific Director at the 501(c) nonprofit, MEAction, a Biochemistry Affiliate Researcher in Stanford Medicine at Stanford University, and an honoree of TIME100 Health. My research focuses on infection-associated chronic disease, with primary focus on myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) and Long COVID (PASC), and secondary focus on postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS), hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (hEDS), chronic Lyme disease, disorders of mast cell activation (MCAS), and post-infectious childhood disorders including PANS/PANDAS.

My work examines ME/CFS heritability, metabolomics, disease presentation, and its relationship to other neurological, often virally-triggered diseases. I am also keen to understand the pathognomonic symptom of ME/CFS: post-exertional malaise (PEM), reflected in my PEM survey instrument in validation, and in my work on PEM at Stanford, where I gained experience in benchwork under Dr. Ron Davis at the Stanford Genome Technology Center (SGTC).

As a person with lived experience with infection-associated chronic disease, I have insight into symptom presentation and the trust of the patient community through consistent engagement and work delivered over years of service. In my role as Director of Scientific and Medical Outreach, I sounded the alarm regarding the long-term health effects of SARS-CoV-2 infection. I led the creation of our COVID Disinformation Guide, and created and promoted our Hospitalization Kit materials and the Pacing Guide, a layperson's guide to symptom-contingent activity management after COVID, in early 2020. I subsequently developed the Pediatric Pacing Guide in partnership with Long COVID Families, and the Clinician's Pacing Guide in association with the Patient-Led Research Collaborative (PLRC), and have been on grant review committees for Solve ME, Patient-Led Research Collaborative and Canada’s CIHR.

I have been an invited expert for committees and panels on ME/CFS and Long COVID at the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), World Health Organization (WHO), National Institutes of Health (NIH), and Cochrane Review. I've also been interviewed as an expert on infection-associated chronic disease in TIME, NPR, Rolling Stone, The Washington Post, and science-oriented outlets such as Popular Science, STAT News, and WebMD. Finally, I was the scientific editor for the ME/CFS documentary Unrest, and editor and fact-checker on the associated TED Talk.

I have peer reviewed for several journals, including Work and PLoS ONE, and performed grant review for CIHR (Canadian Institute for Health Research), the Patient-Led Research Collaborative (PLRC), and Solve ME. I have won grants from the Society to Improve Diagnosis in Medicine in partnership with Mayo Clinic Rochester to improve diagnostic accuracy and treatment recommendations for ME/CFS, and the Stanford University Mass Spectrometry (SUMS) Seed Grant.

I've designed and executed clinical education initiatives, including with the Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry; Indiana State; and Mayo Clinic, and spearheaded institutional outreach for MEAction’s Teach ME, Treat ME initiative. I co-authored a Concise Clinical Review for ME/CFS in Mayo Clinic Proceedings which was well-received, with an Altmetric score over 900, and a diagnostic and treatment algorithm for ME/CFS in AskMayoExpert. I also planned and executed Postcards to Doctors, a grassroots outreach initiative to medical providers promoting the clinical education module I co-designed, with a special initiative to ensure outreach to clinicians who serve BIPOC populations. Finally, I have given the plenary talk at annual Society to Improve Diagnosis in Medicine conferences (2021, 2023) and am a member of the CDC-funded Project ECHO initiative, the Long COVID CURES working group to design drug trials in Long COVID, and the REVERSE LC baricitinib trial.