Dr. Furtak earned her B.A. in Psychology from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 1999 and a Ph.D. in Behavioral Neuroscience from Yale University in 2006. Subsequently, Dr. Furtak held postdoctoral positions at Brown University and Harvard Medical School. In 2012, Dr. Furtak joined California State University Sacramento (Sacramento State) as a tenure-track faculty in Psychology and was granted early promotion to the rank of Professor in the spring of 2022. She spent her academic career researching the biological routes of emotional learning and memory with a cross-species approach. Dr. Furtak has published many articles in prominent journals such as JAMA Psychiatry and Neuron. Her teaching, mentoring, and research efforts have been supported with grants from the National Science Foundation. She has been recognized for her dedication to research and education, being awarded the Early-Career Faculty Research and Creative Activity Award in recognition of her research productivity at Sacramento State and teaching achievement awards.