Erica obtained her B.A. in Cognitive Science and Psychology at Johns Hopkins University, where she was involved in cognitive neuropsychology research examining various acquired and developmental cognitive deficits.  She then earned a M.S. in Psychology at Purdue University, using event-related potentials (ERPs) in conjunction with psychophysical analysis of behavioral data to study differences between college students with and without ADHD.  She completed her Ph.D. in Psychology at Washington University in St. Louis, where her research focused on using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to better understand the neural correlates of single word reading.  Erica also spent two years as a postdoctoral fellow at Washington University, allowing her to apply her background in the study of reading to issues in the development of reading, spelling, and related skills.  Her focus on developmental cognitive neuroscience continues in her postdoctoral fellowship at the BDIL, where she worked on behavioral and fMRI studies of semantic fluency in children and adults. 

Since January 2007, Erica has been working in the area of human factors psychology as a full time scientist at Pacific Science & Engineering Group in San Diego. Her projects include development of behavioral and psychophysiological metrics for assessing operational performance for US Marines, and the investigation of information exchange to support decision making in command and control settings for the US Navy.