Bill Watterson Email & Phone Number

Boulder, Colorado, United States

I worked on a team bridging engineering instrumentation and bio teams to develop and integrate new workflows and technologies into the design of Inscripta’s automated high-throughput genome editing platforms. I led experiments dictating key instrument designs through the product development process – including physical and statistical modeling, technology identification and derisking, and development of electronic and hardware intrumentation.

Created a new research arm for the lab by organizing a multi-team collaboration aimed at developing next generation high-throughput microfluidic devices for culturing human gut microorganisms and secured grants ($>1M) for project funding. Created a high-throughput microfluidic/electronic platform with a custom built high-speed image analysis pipeline for screening and sorting of desired microbial phenotypes. Analyzed the data through statistical sampling analyses and 16S bioinformatics. We showed that Our technology increases the culturable fraction of bacteria from human samples by up to 400%, reduces biases of traditional methods, and detected 21 taxa of antibiotic resistant organisms undetectable by plate cultivation. Designed, fabricated, and tested gold nanohole array Surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) based sensors for the rapid identification of gut microorganisms.

I built a new research arm in my advisor’s lab focused on developing photovoltaic-based neural implants. I led this effort by identifying the research directions, building the lab, creating collaborations through a research exchange fellowship, mentoring 9 students, co-writing a funded $900k dollar grant, and publishing 10 papers (4 first author). Two of my first author papers are based off numerical simulations of code I developed (C/C++ with parallel computing) which utilized sparse matrix linear algebra to implement a resistor-capacitor network to solve hundreds of thousands of nodal voltages and determine neural stimulation parameters. The simulations suggested a >5x improvement in restored visual acuity versus previous designs.One of my first author papers explores the fabrication and characterization of carbon nanotubes as a cellular interface material. We grew retinal cells on a biomaterial interface, carbon nanotubes, and quantified cellular outgrowth through a custom in-house automated image analysis pipeline as well as through carbon nanotube surface characterization by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). We found that a metallic precursor component in carbon nanotubes is detrimental to cell growth and can be mitigated through appropriate fabrication procedures.Performed a market analysis on three market-application pairs for our neural-electrical interface platform technology. Value chains, value propositions, and differentiators were established followed by interviewing professionals to determine the market gap between existing technology and ours. The analysis identified retinal implants as the best path forward to commercialization.

Doctor Of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Physics

Bachelor'S Degree, Physics And Mathematics