Clayton Coffman Email & Phone Number

Seattle, Wa, Us

Seattle, Wa, Us

Seattle, Washington, United States

Seattle, Washington, United States

I am responsible for printing all the labels needed for our assembly and shipping operations. I manage stock, maintain equipment, and meet deliverables. I enjoy optimizing my workflow to maximize my productivity.

Nashville, Tennessee, United States

While doing Day of Discovery I was also appointed to spend 50% of my time managing to startup of a new makerspace which was built on the Peabody Campus. This involved managing $100k of equipment and material purchases, commissioning of new equipment, safety inspections, and teaching training workshops for CAD modeling and using 3D printers and laser cutters in the space.

Nashville, Tennessee, United States

I was hired (as a postdoctoral fellow) to develop and implement a novel, hands-on science education and outreach program for 7th and 8th grade students. The students came from three public schools in Nashville and were bussed to the Vanderbilt campus for a full day of hands-on science. There were 5 groups of ~20 students who came once a week. This was 5 days of class per week for approximately 30 weeks. There was no homework and no tests.The curriculum was entirely new, not repurposed from other programs. I, along with a co-instructor, developed active curricula for a diverse range of science topics. We focused primarily on skills and confidence-building with the goal of fostering lasting interest in science. Some of the topics including 3D printing, Arduino programming, data science with R, fabric dying (chemistry), molecular biology, designing experiments, chemistry and physics of concrete, computer programing, using a ruler and compass to do geometry, plant identification, robotics, microbiology, using microscopes, making chemical solutions, using balances and pipettes, and optics. This was coupled with lots of field trips to labs and facilities on the Vanderbilt campus. In addition to instruction I was also required to communicate with schools and parents, recruiting new students, and managing a lot of paperwork.

Columbia, Mo

I was the lead technician for a research project funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF). I scheduled and trained staff, coordinated study logistics, and developed execution pipelines which allowed to process hundreds of samples efficiently despite a very complicated experimental protocol.I was also responsible for preparing experimental reports including statistical analyses and data visualizations. To keep up with volume of data we generated I developed an automated data analysis pipeline using R which processed output files from analytical chemistry instruments and hand-recorded measurements into standardized reports and metrics which I presented at weekly meetings. This allowed the lead scientists to make decisions rapidly about upcoming experiments.

Columbia, Missouri, United States

I studied mostly plant chemistry and how it was affected by insect attack. Along the way I did a lot of molecular biology, radio-isotope handling, liquid and gas chromatography, mass spectrometry, plant and insect ecology, and even took an intensive course on synthetic biology at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.My dissertation specifically was on the effects of light-quality on carbon source-sink dynamics in plants (Arabidopsis). I had a lot of data from diverse sources to bring together while doing this, and this was when I fell in love with R.My first real data science project was the data infrastructure and analysis pipeline I developed to handle my dissertation. The difficulty was:* I had multiple sources of data which had to be integrated carefully.* I needed tables of statistics and many complex data visualizations* I had to keep track of the data sources that went into every analysis and visualization....and...* All of this had to go into a very complicated .pdf file (the dissertation itself).The solution I ended up with was a combination of using R scripts and LaTeX. Using R to import, analyze, and output figures from my datasets and LaTex to integrate those graphics and tables into a document.This software stack generated all the reports and graphics from the original datasets and integrated them into a pdf which contained all the supporting text, protocols, and background information about those data. It was a ton of work and absolutely far more enjoyable than using MS Word.

Columbia, Missouri, United States

Taught four sections of Intro. to Biological Systems Lab at Mizzou. There was some specific curriculum but we were encouraged to develop our own lectures.

Columbia, Missouri, United States

I served for two years as an embedded scientist in elementary school classrooms. I did this along side my PhD research. This was part of the National Science Foundation's GK-12 Fellowship program and I spent ~15 hours per week in elementary school science classrooms as an embedded scientist/curriculum consultant. I did this for two years, the first year at Benton Elementary and the second at Derby Ridge elementary, both in Columbia, Missouri. These were both low-income high-needs schools and my jobs was to enhance and enrich the science classrooms experiance. During this time I worked closely with four classrooms and facilitated three student-developed research projects in plant growth, water quality, and solar astronomy. Additionally I developed educational experiances for several university field-trips.

Columbia, Missouri, United States

I spent some time volunteering as a mentor/consultant for a science outreach program for HS students. I facilitated them setting up and executing experiments on plant biology in their schools and taught some classes on plant biology in those schools. I also led a few workshops for HS teachers about doing research in their classrooms and methods of data collection.

Columbia, Missouri, United States

Taught two sections of Intro. to Biological Systems Lab at Mizzou. There was some specific curriculum but we were encouraged to develop our own lectures.

State College, Pennsylvania, United States

I spent one semester as an instructor for a writing-intensive, sophomore-level cell and molecular biology lab. The class was fairly conventional though I am proud to have decided to hold test-review sessions for students on my own time, which were very popular.

State College, Pa

I started my journey towards a PhD at Penn State University after I finished my undergraduate work. I enjoyed my time there immensely and got to work with some amazing scientists - leaders in their field! It was here that I learned R and did some of my first work with bioinformatics. It was during this time I started working in the lab of Dr. Jack Schultz studying chemical ecology. Shortly after finishing my candidacy exam Dr. Schultz was offered a position at the University of Missouri, and I was offered a fellowship to move to the University of Missouri with him.

I designed and taught a college-preparatory chemistry class (including a laboratory component) for rising high school seniors. The students were from low-income/underprivileged backgrounds and the purpose of the program was to make college feel more accessible for these students. I had complete freedom in my design of the course and was very happy with the results. I also, under my own initiative, developed a small research project for some of my top students. We analyzed some stable isotope signatures for plants and insect herbivores and their mutualists and presented a poster at a summer undergraduate research program. This project was completely unfunded, I was able to pull some favors to get access to equipment and analytical services. It just seemed like a really fun thing to do.

Fayetteville, Arkansas, United States

This was a short-term position working in an agricultural pest-research laboratory for Professor Tim Kring. My duties were to maintain a colony of insects for use in experiments. I had to grow a greenhouse full of sorghum plants, which were used to feed a colony of aphids, which were used to feed a colony of ladybugs, on which we evaluated the effects of pesticides.

Fayetteville, Arkansas, United States

This was my second laboratory job working with Prof. Fiona Goggin studying plant-nematode interactions . I got this job after applying for and receiving an undergraduate research fellowship to work for 6 months on this project. It was here I learned to do qPCR and measured nematode performance on tomato plants with cyst and egg-counting assays.

Fayetteville, Arkansas, United States

This was my first job in a lab working for Professor Ralph Henry. My first responsibility was to extract chloroplasts from pea plants for use in molecular biology experiments. I was quickly assigned new work though and worked on some molecular cloning projects and did a lot of large-scale protein production and purification. This went on to develop into my undergraduate thesis studying the function of some chaperone proteins involved in chloroplast protein transport.

Data Science

Doctor Of Philosophy - Phd, Plant Sciences

Bachelor Of Science - Bs, Biology