Becky Waugh

LIFE Fellow since 2025, University of Virginia

As a PhD candidate at the University of Virginia, I work across the cognitive and neuroscience domains and am co-supervised by Jessica Connelly and Per Sederberg. Motivating my work is one overarching question: Why do some people live a long and healthy life while others develop early-onset neurodegenerative diseases? Currently, I am working on an aging study following prairie voles (Microtus ochrogaster) as they age. The project seeks to understand how differences in early life parental care relate to long term changes in epigenetic age and brain health. To assess this, we incorporate both an epigenetic age clock measurement and findings from MR neuroimaging using a small animal scanner. Originally from Rhode Island, I attended the University of St Andrews (in Scotland) for my undergrad and masters degrees, then worked at Brown University and the National Institutes of Health before joining the Psychology department at UVA.

Selected Publications

Hinton, T. D., Waugh, R. E., Sederberg, P. B., Connelly, J. J., & Perkeybile, A. M. (2025). Dynamic duos: Learning to care as a pair in the biparental prairie vole (Microtus ochrogaster). Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience, 19, Article 1698616. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnbeh.2025.1698616 

Perkeybile, A. M., Kenkel, W. M., Yee, J. R., Waugh, R. E., Lillard, T. S., Ferris, C. F., Carter, C. S., & Connelly, J. J. (2025). Oxytocin treatment at birth accelerates an epigenetic shift in the oxytocin receptor gene in the maternal brain. BMC Pregnancy Childbirth, 25, Article 777. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12884-025-07868-7