Brandon Pratt Email and Phone Number

I am a highly motivated researcher aiming to reveal the role of proprioception in flexible walking through combining my engineering, analytical, experimental, and computational skills. I meticulously built a novel treadmill system for running fruit flies at different speeds, with or without proprioceptive feedback. In addition, I developed a python acquisition script that allows me to collect large datasets consisting of multi-camera high-speed video recordings of the movement of the fly on the treadmill. Then using deep neural networks and other computational techniques, I reconstruct the 3D walking kinematics of the fly. Finally, I analyze and visualize the 3D walking kinematics of flies within these large datasets in an automated fashion through custom python packages.

Constructed a multi-site extracellular electrophysiology system containing a visual arena to study the visual motion selectivity of neurons descending from the moth brain.Created visual stimuli consisting of objects and moving gratings of different frequencies in MATLAB.Analyzed electrophysiology data in MATLAB to quantify the responses of neurons to visual stimuli.Programmed a robotic flower using C++ to reveal the selectivity of neurons to naturalistic stimuli.

Functional analysis of the purposed startle response circuit in tunicates.

Taught two lab sections of an undergraduate honors biology course of more than 20 students.Facilitated in the planning and execution of weekly labs and final projects.

• Designed and performed electrophysiological experiments to reveal the features of wing deformationencoded by neurons associated with sensors on the moth wing.• Research resulted in a first author peer-reviewed publication: http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2017.0969• Analyzed neuronal data in MATLAB to characterize the responses of neurons to wing displacement.• Presented research at national and University of Washington hosted conferences.• Three-time Young Scholars program mentor, Center for Neurotechnology, 2015-2017.• Research funded in part by awarded Mary Gates Scholarship and WSF Fellowship in Neuroengineering.

Optimization of Virus Like Particles and Construction of Mutant Neuraminidase Genomic Library