I'm an interdisciplinary scientist who's spent a decade moving between the bench, the microscope, and the codebase — currently building the next generation of spatial biology instruments in San Jose, CA.
Santa Cruz Mountains, CA
Born in Singapore, I moved to the Santa Cruz mountains in the second grade. I graduated from Los Gatos High School and went south to pursue a degree in Physiology and Neuroscience at UC San Diego. After completing my studies, I joined a local biotech firm, Diazyme, to help develop and test clinical diagnostic assays.
In 2016, I returned to academia to begin my PhD at UC Riverside. My research focused on the role of the noradrenergic nucleus, the locus coeruleus, in behavioral flexibility — a significant part of my effort went into building custom data acquisition rigs, designing novel behavioral paradigms, and building pipelines to analyze large-scale, multi-modal datasets.
Since then, I've carried that same curiosity into industry — first developing rapid imaging workflows at Akoya Biosciences, and now leading applications engineering for spatial genomics instrumentation at Acuity.
As a more outdoorsy-than-indoorsy type, I enjoy running, biking, surfing, and golfing my way around the Santa Cruz mountains — usually with my two dogs, Bear and Molly, close behind.
A career, like a good trail, rarely runs in a straight line. Here's the route from the lab bench to the instrument floor.
Work on the locus coeruleus — the brain's noradrenergic hub — and its role in sensory processing and behavioral flexibility.
* denotes co-first authorship
Trails with Bear and Molly, time in the woodshop, and — more often than not — something happening in the kitchen.
