I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences at Purdue University. I am currently recruiting graduate students for Fall 2025. Please contact me if you are interested in applying! I was formerly a postdoc in the UC San Diego Vision and Memory Lab, where I worked with Tim Brady. I received my PhD in 2022 from the Harvard/MIT Speech and Hearing Bioscience and Technology program, where I worked with Josh McDermott. During my PhD, I was funded by a National Institutes of Health F31 grant and by the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program. I have received the Weintraub Graduate Student Award from Fred Hutch and was named to the 2022 Forbes "30 Under 30" list in science. As a Churchill Scholar, I completed my MPhil at the University of Cambridge Centre for Music and Science. I hold a Bachelor's degree in Cognitive Science from Johns Hopkins University.

My broad research interest is understanding how listeners perceive and remember sound, particularly speech and music. I also hope to characterize how individual differences in experience, training, and culture change auditory perception.

Outside the lab, I can be found sculling on the nearest body of water, exploring local cycling routes, or playing viola. And occasionally I can't be found at all because I am backpacking somewhere with no cell service.

Pronouns: she/her/hers
Name Pronunciation: muh-LIN-duh mick-FUR-son
Background Image: A spectrogram of acapella singers (time on the x axis, frequency on y axis, and color indicating sound intensity)