Biomedical Magnetic Resonance Imaging

Recruited by Sr. Director of Scientific Operations & Projects to start and manage a new team of research technicians for the fruit fly connectome project (Janelia's FlyEM Project). Established recruiting and training pipelines to build and lead a team of 50+ expert technicians (direct reports) within 3 years.Trained humans to train machines.Consulted and collaborated with Janelia scientists to identify neuronal circuits of interest across multiple EM datasets - FAFB, hemibrain, FANC, FAbG.Built and maintained long-term relationships with internal and external stakeholders to navigate EM volumes of the fly brain.Developed and executed change and agile management strategies towards building and maintaining a dynamic team of employees to meet evolving requirements across various labs and projects.Established and fostered a learning environment for early career professionals exploring a future in science.

Reviewed and tested code for the book:Data Wrangling with Python - Taming Your Datahttp://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920032861.do

Led an NIH-funded project, NeuroMorpho.Org, and 50-member team to develop a neuroscience database consolidating (and rendering interoperable) data from over 160 sources.Developed and executed outreach strategy that grew data from 5,000 to 35,000; number of data partners from 40 to 165; traffic to database from 15,000 to 160,000 and downloads from half million to over 6 million.Streamlined data collection and standardization time by 70% through process changes and training.Organized two-day conference attended by 50 leading neuroscientists, computational modelers and software developers to present and share discoveries related to neuronal morphologies.Published 7 articles, including those in Neuron, Frontiers in Neuroscience, Cell & Tissue Research, Neuroinformatics, The Neuroscientist, Frontiers in Neuroanatomy, Encyclopedia of Computational Neuroscience.Invited and presented at 13 conferences and events including those at the Society for Neuroscience annual meetings, White House OSTP/AAS/SfN’s Super Neuroscience Saturday, National Academies Keck Futures Initiatives grant meeting, Brain Awareness Week Campaign, College of William & Mary, OpenWorm Journal Club, SAMSI Trees Working Group Webinar, Women in Neuroscience at GMU.Served as a reviewer for Frontiers in Computational Neuroscience, ISRN Neuroscience, PLoS Computational Biology, Neuroscience, and Journal of Comparative Neurology.

My research focused on understanding the biological basis of epilepsy and was the first known study to identify and characterize a pre-seizure state. This stage before a seizure begins can now be targeted therapeutically to control/prevent seizures.

I assisted in the exploratory phase of experiments towards developing new therapies to prevent seizures in epilepsy. I quantified changes in neurons in response to electrode implantation and tested the quality of the electrodes after implantation in brain tissue.

I assisted in a comparative study exploring the effects of nicotine and alcohol on neuronal morphology in the rat neocortex. I processed brain tissue with Golgi stain, traced neurons using camera lucida and performed quantitative analyses on tracings.