research

My first independent research project was performed in conjunction with Dr. Kelly Huffman at the University of California, Riverside. We injected lipophilic dyes into embryonic and postnatal CD1 mouse brains (neocortex), sectioned the tissue, and performed histological characterization with fluorescence microscopy to trace callosal connections throughout development. We found early crossing of the corpus callosum during  embryonic stages (E14) and completion around the first postnatal day (P1). We hypothesized that these timings are skewed after prenatal ethanol exposure, indicative of the effect of drugs on the developing brain.

In my PhD work at the University of Utah, I joined Matt Wachowiak's lab in the Department of Neurobiology. I was wanted to work in a lab utilizing neurophysiological techniques to uncover plasticity and found that the olfactory system is the perfect system to study. The olfactory bulb is the first-pass, processing center of the brain, responsible for mapping odors to the brain. Such neural circuits processing olfactory information have to be complex in their excitatory or inhibitory synaptic connections. We decided to explore the excitatory connection through two-photon imaging of postsynaptic excitatory drive across the output neurons of the intact mouse olfactory bulb. We found a large diversity in the odor-evoked excitatory responses across these sets of output neurons. Surprisingly, when using drugs to dissect such circuit contributions, we discovered that the complexity in these responses is likely a result of dominant, direct input from sensory neurons in the nose as compared with postsynaptic processing in the functional unit of the olfactory bulb; i.e., the glomerulus.  Future use of these glutamate sensors would be useful in disentangling circuits across the brain along with indicators of summated neural activity (i.e., voltage or calcium indicators). 

Following my PhD, in 2020, I moved to Colorado to work at CU Anshcutz Medical Campus under Abby Person and Diego Restrepo. I wanted to work investigating odor-plume navigation. My work looks at how the cerebellum can encode for positions of a scented target in space under the context of goal-directed reaching. Since the sensory and motor systems are processed in separate pathways, a new avenue of neuroscience has focused on the where, when, and how integration of these signals arise. Goal-directed reaching is a cortical dependent phenomenon that is mostly olfactory guided in rodents. The cerebellum is a region of the brain that  utilizes predictive networks to gauge the position of the limb for fine motor correction. Therefore, it stands to reason that the cerebellum contains relevant information to the location of the droplet in space for fine motor correction, mostly using odor plume cues.

In 2022, I transitioned to industry, where I worked as a technical product manager and data scientist for a medtech startup, Torque3. Torque3 has developed a VR and robotics platform meant to help treat stroke and TBI survivors through using full-body immersion and neurotherapy principles. Our initial, small-scale testing of the platform with impaired adults saw promising improvement in multiple measures of physical and emotional/mental health.  This experience gave me experience and insight into delivering data-driven results from a product meant for commercialization in a growing market.