Research

My overall research philosophy is to take existing ideas and apply them in new areas. Lately, I have spent most of my time accelerating my analysis with basic machine learning.

Intratumor Heterogeneity and Treatment Regimens

The main focus of the Brock lab is to “investigate the role of heterogeneity in cell state transitions, cancer progression, and therapeutic responses”. I have particular interest in therapeutic response. The consistent rise of resistance to chemotherapy in breast cancer is both terrifying and fascinating. Remarkably, the solution is not necessarily to treat with more drug. I want to evaluate transcriptional changes from cells, and then transition this knowledge into mathematical modeling. Similarly, I’m interested in drugs which induce collateral sensitivity, a phenomenon in which resistant cells become sensitive once again.

Virtual Reality and Orthopaedic Biomechanics

In another life, I strapped reflective markers on to people and robots and then evaluated their kinematic movements in the Baylor Biomotion Laboratory. Although cancer research is something I am passionate about, I still enjoy thinking about low-cost solutions which can help aid in physical therapy. While at Baylor, I primarily researched validation of virtual reality systems. There, I found that commercial grade systems such as the HTC Vive have tracking accuracies below a millimeter. I’m excited to see where people take this knowledge, and I hope to one day see people receiving quantitative evaluations of rehabilitative exercises from computer systems.

Mouse Ultrasonic Vocalizations

My first introduction to research was in the Yu Lab at Stowers Institute for Medical Research. While I was there, I learned about how a lab is run and operated, as well as how mouse vocalize. This is also where I first built my programming skills using MATLAB to analyze audio data.