Dr. Ferguson completed her thesis work in Dr. Wen-Jun Gao’s lab, where she focused on understanding basic mechanisms of cognitive function in the prefrontal cortex, and how those processes erode in the context of psychiatric diseases, such as schizophrenia and autism-spectrum disorders. She explored how the thalamus regulates the prefrontal cortex (PFC) to optimize abilities like working memory, cognitive flexibility, and social interaction. This work was funded by an internal grant through Drexel University, the Dean’s Fellowship for Excellence in Collaborative or Themed Research, as well as a predoctoral NIMH NRSA F31 fellowship. During Dr. Ferguson's graduate work, she gleaned that her preferred method of investigation was trying to understand basic mechanisms that support behavior and how they may go awry in pathology. She also became fascinated with the thalamus for its importance in supporting so many fundamental cognitive processes, and curious how activity in the intra-thalamic circuit could become hijacked to result in other pathological conditions such as epilepsy. This led her to pursue a postdoctoral fellowship in the laboratory of John Huguenard, an expert in the field of epilepsy research, as well as normal and pathological mechanisms of thalamocortical function. For her postdoctoral work, Dr. Ferguson began by examining whether reticular thalamic dysfunction was a shared mechanism for absence seizures and attention deficits in a rodent model of epilepsy. This work was ultimately funded by a postdoctoral NINDS NRSA F32. For the final stage of her postdoc and in her future lab, she plans to elucidate prefrontal inhibitory microcircuits that support attentional processes in the healthy state and how that circuit is disrupted across diseases with co-morbid attentional impairments. Outside of the lab, she is active in Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion efforts, and co-founded and serves as Director of Programs for Black In Neuro.