My academic training includes a lot of basic and applied research, and I've spent most of my life thinking scientifically, and figuring out how to pose problems and predictions in a testable / falsifiable way.
First Job - Developing and Modelling Neuromorphic Function Blocks for Embedded Microdevices - Intel
In my last semester of high school, I started my first job at the Embedded Microdevices Division ( EMD) at Intel's Chandler Site. There I learned UNIX / AIX,
Undergraduate - Immunology and Tissue Culture
As an undergraduate, I helped my teaching assistant a bit with her work on eosinophiles, and performed semester projects both at the Cancer Research Institute doing human tissue culture, and under an immunologist doing literature review.
Masters' Work at University of Hawai`i at Mānoa - Applying Nonlinear Optimization Techniquest to Solve for Tissue Culture Conditions
When I started working towards a PhD in microbiology UH Mānoa, I wanted to work on virology and immunology, and I completed the coursework towards that end. Unfortunately, I quickly discovered that while I loved the research problems, I hate doing「 animal work 」and continuing there would have taken many years of experimentation on penaeid shrimp to study the White Spot and Yellowhead viruses.
Instead of completing that work, I switched to a Masters' degree and refocused my research on applying nonlinear optimisation techniques to find the best conditions / nutrients for tissue culture. My advisor called this very esoteric, but I still believe that such an approach to optimisation is both useful and necessary especially when working with systems which are difficult to culture in vitro.
Doctorate -「 Modeling and analyzing the motion of biomolecules 」
My PhD ( physics ) research at Arizona State University's Center for Biological Physics under Michael Thorpe focused on inferring hierarchial flexible mechanical structure from relative co-movement of atoms within macromolecules. This involved theoretical analysis inspired by things like linear normal-mode analysis, but it extended from that and offered a more general approach to nonlinear systems.
This same approach is general enough that it can be applied to any system of relatively co-moving partly tracked objects in an arbitrary metric / measure space.
Distributed Datastructures and Algorithms - Arizona State University ( ASU )'s High Performance Computing Iniative ( HPCI )
In my doctoral work I spent a lot of time on distributed data structures and parallel analysis, and that led me to working at the HPCI as a research scientist.
There I continued my own work and worked with other researchers to help them find ways to apply parallel / distributed algorithms to answer their research questions.
Robotics Research - Roambotics
At Roambotics, my goal was to build towards general purpose personal robots. This ongoing work involved ideation and design of physical robotic systems, but, more crucially finding ways to write programs for robotic systems to abstract away descriptions of how to automate physical tasks.
Activism
I'm a lefty. I believe food and shelter and healthcare and education and the ability to learn and grow and pursue our passions are human rights that we should all have the opportunity to do.
I've spent a lot of time in developed countries like Japan and France and know how much better things could be and what we could have if we worked together for it rather than chasing after selfish indivualistic pursuits.
Co-Evolution Research - ASU Center for Mechanisms of Evolution ( CME )
At the CME, I've studied how interactions between two or more organisms, and ways in which evolving systems progress subject to competing forces such as mutation and drift in the presence of selection.
Onward
I love research and would probably want to be a professor in the once-upon-a-time sense of being able to pursue my own abundant research interests and, perhaps, teach a class every other semester. In the current publish-or-perish / highly competitive constant battle for funding, I can't imagine I would want to work in academic research, and my very negative experiences in the CME, I can not see myself continuing down an academic research path, but I would very much like to continue to find ways to integrate research into my life and work going forward.