I am currently an editor at Nature Neuroscience. Before beginning my editorial career, I studied how the mind converts incoming sensory information into abstract mental representations, using written language as a model system. As literate adults we are continuously confronted with the need to convert visual symbols into linguistic meaning as we read letters and digits in the world around us. Despite large fields of study in visual cognition and in reading, the interface between vision and language is rarely studied yet has the potential to offer insights into both domains.  In my research I addressed questions such as: What are the mental operations that permit the recognition of written language? And how are these processes shaped by both the visual system and the language system? Broadly, my work informs our understanding of both visual cognition and reading processes and has implications for the more general question of the flexibility of human perceptual capacities.