Brittany Woodruff completed a B.S. in Biology and Psychology with a concentration in Neuroscience at the University of Richmond. During a gap year, she worked as a Teaching Assistant at the Fasion School for Autism and as a Medical Scribe at VCU Medical Center Emergency Room at Critical Care Hospital in Richmond, VA. She will be completing her M.S. thesis in Neuroscience in Dr. Suzy Scherf’s laboratory of Developmental Neuroscience at the Pennsylvania State University (Fall 2021).

Brittany is interested in how reward systems drive social motivation, how gender influences differences in reward and social motivation, and how abnormalities in reward systems and social motivation contribute to psychiatric disorders and developmental disabilities. Her research at Penn State University focuses on sex differences in facial emotion recognition in relation to autism like traits and social behaviors.