Education
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PhD in Neurobiology, In progress
Duke University -
MS in Biology, 2016
Montclair State University -
BS in Biochemistry, 2014
Montclair State University
Bio
I'm currently pursuing a doctorate in Neurobiology at Duke University. Broadly I am interested in how cells specialize to sense mechanical stimuli and integrate information about the physical constraints of their environment. I am currently working in the laboratory of Dr. Jorg Grandl where I focus on characterizing the energetics of rapid, ion channel-mediated mechanotransduction by combining atomic force microscopy and electrophysiology.
I have always had a strong motivation to learn new skills that can help make me be a more productive scientist and person in general. As a result, on top of my work in the lab I have built skills in general purpose programming, web development, and 3D modeling and animation using Blender.
In my free time I am an avid film fan and keep up with many of the modern releases. I also enjoy cycling and one day hope to make the ride from coast to coast across the US.
Feel free to explore my website to learn more about me and contact me if you have any questions.
Laboratory Skills
Electrophysiology
Years experience: 8
I have extensive experience performing in vitro whole-cell, cell-attached, and inside-out recordings from immortalized cell-lines and primary cultures of DRG neurons. I am familiar with designing and implementing protocols in both HEKA Patchmaster and Molecular Devices pClamp recording software. I also have extensive experience performing both pressure clamp and whole-cell poke assays.
Atomic Force Microscopy
Years experience: 4
I have experience working with a Digital Instruments Bioscope for contact AFM in an open-loop configuration using a breakout box. In the open loop configuration the Bioscope was used primarily as a force actuator and was integrated into an electrophysiology system. I wrote custom scripts to calibrate the AFM and analyze AFM data. I also generated custom input in LabView to drive the piezoscanner.
Cell Culture
Years experience: 8
I have worked with multiple immortalized cell lines. I have experience maintaining, freezing, regenerating, and transfecting cultured cells. I also have experience culturing and recording mouse primary dorsal root ganglion neurons.
Cloning/Mutagenesis
Years experience: 5
I have experience generating both point mutations and chimeric protein constructs. I have gained the necessary experience working with constructs in plasmid vectors by performing gel purification, PCR, transformation, and maxi/mini-prepping. Further, I have some experience in primer design.
Coding Experience
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Python
Experience: 6 years
Skill level: Proficient
Extensive experience with preprocessing, analysis, and visualization of electrophysiology data. Some additional experience in object-oriented programming and web-development using Flask.
Julia
Experience: 2 years
Skill level: Proficient
Experience with preprocessing, analysis, and visualization of electrophysiology data. Some experience with package development and annotation. Created a package SpikeStats while going through the Theoretical Neuroscience text by Dayan and Abbott to simulate and analyze neurophysiology data.
R
Experience: 6 years
Skill level: Comfortable
Experience with analysis, statistics, and visualization mostly using tidyverse (dplyr) for final analysis of preprocessed data and publication quality plotting in ggplot2.
HTML5
Experience: 1 year
Skill level: Comfortable
Experience developing, hosting, and maintaining websites and small webapps.
CSS3
Experience: 1 year
Skill level: Comfortable
Experience with responsive web design on small websites and webapps.
Sass
Experience: 0.5 year
Skill level: Comfortable
Experience with responsive web design on small websites and webapps.
Bootstrap
Experience: 1 year
Skill level: Some Experience
Experience with responsive web design on small websites and webapps.
Javascript
Experience: 6 months
Skill level: Some Experience
Some experience with minor DOM manipulation, interactivity, and communication with web APIs.
Matlab
Experience: 6 months
Skill level: Some Experience
Experience with basic scripting and linear algebra mostly as a part of a Coursera Machine Learning course. Some experience using the Image Processing Toolbox writing code to analyze mouse eye-blink data and to analyze RNAScope data.