• I’m a Neuroscientist with training in Electrical Engineering, Molecular Biology, and Neuroethology.

• I want to figure out how biological nervous systems generate behavior. I’ve studied this in different parts of the nervous system, in different effectors and species. Specifically I have,
  • Discovered the neural code for how the nervous system represents the motion of the limb in the spinal cord.
  • Identified and a validated a population neural code for touch-related pain in the brainstem.
  • Showed that the motor cortex is required for the fine scale movements of the tongue and arm.
• I address biological questions by building novel tools to precisely measure and perturb animal behavior - all of these tools were state-of-the-art when deployed. e.g.
  • A robotic system to precisely move the limb of a mouse with micron-millisecond resolution and apply micro-newton scale coriolis forces in real time.
  • A deep-learning based system to track tongue kinematics with ~10 micron resolution
  • A hall-sensor based joystick for mice with micron-millisecond resolution, and a fully automated high-throughput system that trains mice to use these devices in closed-loop.
• I’m currently a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Salk Institute, I did my PhD and M.Eng at Cornell. My research has been supported by several competitive fellowships.
  • Postdoctoral Fellow with Martyn Goulding at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. My work at the Salk has been supported by fellowships from the Helen Hay Whitney Foundation and the Brown Foundation.
  • PhD research with Jesse Goldberg at Neurobiology and Behavior, Cornell University. Supported by a Cornell-Mong Neurotech Fellowship and a Cornell University Fellowship.
  • Master’s Thesis in the labs of Chris Schaffer and Nozomi Nishimura and Peter Doerschuk at Biomedical Engineering, Cornell University.