Highlights

Riley Hoffman graduated from Harvard University in 2023 with a Bachelor of Science in Cognitive Neuroscience and Evolutionary Psychology.

She subsequently served as Lab Manager of the Emotion, Health, and Psychophysiology Lab at Yale University, where she oversaw all day-to-day operations of the social psychophysiology lab and managed multiple concurrent psychophysiology studies.

She is currently a Tribal Advocate at Legal Aid of Wyoming, representing Native clients before the Wind River Tribal Court, and will begin her JD at Harvard Law School in 2026.

Professional Experience

• Tribal Advocate, Legal Aid of Wyoming (Dec 2025 – present)
• Legal Assistant, Legal Aid of Wyoming (Jun 2025 – Mar 2026)

Lab Manager at the Emotion, Health, and Psychophysiology Lab: Yale University (August 2023 – May 2025)

•  Oversee all day-to-day operations of the social psychophysiology lab
•  Coordinate research staff and assist with training new staff
• Assist in renewals and modifications of IRB protocol applications

Research Assistant at the Center for Law, Brain, and Behavior: Massachusetts General Hospital (May 2022 – May 2023)

• Reviewed neuroscience literature on children’s decisional capacity and the importance of children’s voices being heard in foster care proceedings
• Synthesized literature in collaboration with colleagues and National Association of Counsel for Children
• Reviewed literature on dementia and financial capacity in elder adults and synthesized that literature to generate a white paper on necessary increased protections for elders to prevent exploitation

Research Assistant at the Meditation Research Group: Massachusetts General Hospital (February 2020 – May 2023)

• Executed a large-scale fMRI data analysis project, analyzing the data from raw format through all stages of processing using Linux OS, fMRIPrep, AFNI, and FreeSurfer on the McLean Imaging Center Computing Cluster 
• Accomplished my Senior Thesis, including conducting literature review, gaining in-depth understanding of resting state fMRI and state-of-the-art cortical parcellation methods, executing quality control measures, generating cortical and subcortical visualizations, and interpreting my findings and their impact on the field 
• Assisted in growing lab by interviewing new hires and serving as a resource for new hires to gain institutional knowledge

Summer Intern at the National Eye Institute: National Institutes of Health (June 2021 – August 2021)

• Scrutinized an existing behavioral paradigm examining brain mechanisms of color perception in macaques
• Developed and iterated an original statistical model to understand macaques’ experience of behavioral paradigm 
• Created a poster and presentation to display my findings at the 2021 NIH Summer Research Week

Education

• J.D., Harvard Law School (2026 – 2029, in progress)
• B.S., Cognitive Neuroscience and Evolutionary Psychology, Harvard University (2019 – 2023)

Publications