Resume Highlights

Served as the operational lead of a new neuroscience research lab:

For my first job, I started a position with Dr. Womelsdorf, of the Vanderbilt Psychology department. He liked my initiative, but unfortunately, didn't have a job for me past a temporary contract to do some statistical analysis on a neurotransmitter dataset he had recently acquired with his lab, and didn't have the manpower for at the time. After I did some exploratory statistical correlation analysis on the dataset, even utilizing some machine learning principles, I was told that Dr. Bastos, had just joined, and unlike most labs, was only in the initial stages of setup. Since I had a engineering background, I was asked if I was interested in getting heavily involved in the foundational setup and experimental planning of a lab. I accepted, and transferred over.

We set about trying to accomplish the two following overarching goals. First, a publication worthy experiment regarding the global local oddball effect in NHP. Second, imaging of NHP brain tissue, in a way that would yield insights worthy of publication. This meant the following infrastructure needed to be setup.

Global Local Oddball:

1. Recording equipment capable of 1024 channels of simultaneous neuronal recording. 

2. The ability to also visualize all 1024 of the neural channels live during the recording, a feat previously never done.

3. Designing a proper experiment that 

4. Software that tracks NHP response to said oddballs, and presents them properly experiment wise.

5. Training methods/equipment to ensure the NHP understand the experiment and can perform it.

6. Hardware that integrates the digital/analog signals from the experiment and records it.

7. Software pipeline to handle the terabytes of neuronal recordings, as well as the hardware to process and store it.

8. Data analysis of the neuronal data.

9. Compliance with federal and institutional regulation and policy regarding live animal experimentation.

Imaging of NHP brain tissue:

1. Creating visible landmarks inside brain tissue to mark where experiments were recorded from, and ensuring the ability to reconstruct it later.

2. Exploration of novel imaging techniques such as light sheet microscopy on optically cleared tissue.

3. Validation using traditional microtome sectioning and staining followed by confocal microscopy scanning and hand counting.

4. Surgical extraction of brain tissue.

5. Processing of said tissue post extraction, and communication with outside collaborators/vendors.

When I joined, the lab didn't have any full time technical staff. We had one full time graduate student, and staff that had extensive animal care/training experience. I was quick to figure out how to optimally go about solving each of these new problems once the professor explained his vision. As a forward thinker and having the engineering mindset, I was able to break down each problem into its required steps, and start. It wasn't too surprising we had setbacks, we were exploring uncharted territory. However, I proactively prepared for potential issues, and constantly sought improvement upon our current methods to address inefficiencies in our process as we proceeded.

Having shown I could be trusted to handle hard problems, Dr. Bastos could take a hands off approach to the day to day operations, experiment wise. This led to our lab having an extremely competitive edge. Namely, it is typical that fresh PI's are forced to get bogged down in every detail of the hardware and software of their experiment, and it would take years to get it set up, since they are doing it all singlehandedly with some graduate student assistance, plus they need to handle teaching classes, mentoring grad students, grants, and a bunch of administrative overhead. In our case, I served as the primary point of contact whenever "equipment or software" issues came up, so day to day, I handled almost all of it, and in fact, during experiments, it was I instructing the PI how most of the experimental setup was to be done, not the other way around.

His humility of being willing to "basically take orders from a kid", despite being the head of the laboratory, paid dividends. Since he could now focus on teaching an excellent class, he was able to attract top talent from motivated Vanderbilt undergrads to join our lab, (unfortunately, if you've been in college, you know that not every research professor is great at teaching, due to the factors mentioned above), and I was happy to be part of the exception. Furthermore, having a more open schedule allowed him to focus his energy on securing more grants, to fund even more ambitious experiments.

Furthermore, as I was intimately aware of the hardware and software quirks, responsibility for ordering new computers with the required specs was left up to me, and I just got administrative approval from the professor to actually spend the money, after I hand selected all the parts, as I planned ahead for not just current experiments, but also reasonably what we would want to do in the next few years, as I was aware I was in the process of founding a lab. To get analog/digital interfacing setup, I often had to order/design bespoke electronics, I was also in charge of figuring out what type of ethernet cable, USB cable, PCIE insert, RAM, CPU, case, Arduino, Bluetooth chip, etc. that we needed for various experiments, and picking out the most cost effective one that suited our needs.

Once our lab started added more members, I continued to act as the primary point of contact for all "technical" questions, which is why I feel justified calling myself the operational lead. It may be strange to say, but I was essentially the "lubricant" that kept everyone else turning, we added a lot of specialized roles later, and I made sure to keep on top of things, I continued to proactively address any small issues, so that the professor wouldn't need to be distracted, while continuing on my assigned tasks. Unfortunately, on my resume, I couldn't clarify this point due to space constraints. But it wasn't perfectly fair to just claim we got everything up and running, and published in "half the time as our peers", as if it implied we were "the best lab in our department or something". I could see how it could be interpreted that way, that's not my intention. Since I now have space to explain, let me clarify. We owed a big part of our success to the fact that we had plenty of established labs with decades of experience that we could draw upon, plus repurpose retired equipment from. I saved us both time and money by often just picking up an old piece of equipment nobody was using, and figuring out how to get it to serve our current experimental needs via engineering ingenuity. 

I was also involved heavily in knowledge transfer between the labs in the department. As I would discover a new technique that works great to solve an existing issue, I would share it with the established labs, and they would be happy to be rid of a new headache, and would therefore be happy to help us learn a "tried and true" technique. This collaboration ultimately led to a publication of a paper in Nature Neuroscience, of which I could be listed as a co-author. I have included a link below.