Cortni, while an undergraduate at MIT pursuing a degree in biological engineering, worked in the Jasanoff lab at MIT focusing on the connection between the dorsolateral periaqueductal grey (dlPAG) and the medial forebrain bundle (MFB) in a rat model. She also worked in the Albrecht Lab at WPI where she helped develop a high-throughput automated system for screening chemical modulators of neural activity in C. elegans. In the Boyden Lab, she worked with expansion microscopy of zebrafish.