Inventions

Assays, instruments, and software.

I developed or co-developed four assays and instruments and two software tools for research questions that existing methods could not answer. A patent application has been drafted for the PLD activity assay.

Assay · Patent Drafted

Live-Cell Real-Time Phospholipase D (PLD) Activity Assay under Mechanical Force

A continuous, live-cell enzyme-coupled fluorescent assay (Amplex Red / HRP / choline oxidase) that quantifies phospholipase D (PLD1/PLD2) catalytic activity in real time. The assay supports orbital shear-stress delivery in 96-well microplates, osmotic swelling, pharmacological inhibition, and volatile anesthetic exposure.

Real-time continuous fluorescent readout of lipid signaling kinetics
Adapted for in-plate mechanical stimulation (shear stress & osmotic stretch)
Deployed across 5 peer-reviewed publications as primary functional readout
High-throughput format for both enzyme readout and mechanical stimulation

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Instrument · Published Method

Temperature-Controlled Rapid Shear Fixation

A custom parallel-plate system delivers laminar fluid shear stress while an in-line precision heater prevents thermal phase-transition artifacts. A dual PFA/glutaraldehyde injection protocol fixes mechanically stimulated nanodomain states in under 10 seconds.

Temperature clamping within ±0.1 °C to eliminate thermal lipid phase confounds
Chemically traps non-equilibrium stimulated membrane states in under 10 seconds
Preserves spatial organization of nanoscale lipid rafts and ion channel clusters
Enables post-fixation super-resolution localization of activated states

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Imaging · Published Method

Sub-Second Live-Cell 3D-dSTORM Super-Resolution

High-speed 3D single-molecule localization microscopy (dSTORM/SMLM) records at 200 fps (5 ms exposure) and reconstructs video at ~250 ms per frame. It captures nanodomain assembly, disassembly, and lateral translocation under shear force in live cells; traditional STORM reconstruction can require minutes per frame.

~250 ms effective reconstructed video frame rate for live-cell SMLM/dSTORM
200 fps acquisition camera settings on biplane 3D super-resolution optics
Direct visualization of lipid raft disruption and mechanosensory translocation

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Instrument · Published Rig

VAAPR Anesthetic Sensitivity Assay Rig

Volatile Anesthetic Administration in Parallel in Drosophila (VAAPR) combines a narrow vertical chamber array, flow-controlled vapor delivery, and automated animal tracking to calculate T50 anesthetic sensitivity across genetic variants.

Narrow vertical glass chamber array designed for precise gas delivery
Flow-controlled volatile delivery system for chloroform, isoflurane, and diethyl ether
Machine-vision positional recording for objective T50 determination
Published in bioRxiv 2019 and used in a 2020 PNAS anesthesia study

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Software · Private / Open Source

ClockWork Circadian Behavior Analysis Suite

I co-developed an open-source modular Python package with an interactive Streamlit GUI for high-throughput circadian activity time-series analysis. It calculates Lomb-Scargle and chi-square periodograms, performs wavelet decomposition, and scores rhythmicity.

Modular Python engine for TriKinetics / DAM circadian activity data
Interactive Streamlit web GUI for real-time visualization and filtering
Automated periodogram calculation, period determination, and arrhythmicity scoring
NetCDF allows for simple sharing of data and analysis parameters between researchers for publication

Software · In Development

Microscopy Training Simulator

This browser-based simulator models how fluorophore brightness, photobleaching, and background interact with acquisition settings. Users can adjust pinhole diameter, channel acquisition mode, z-stack spacing, and depth across models of a cell monolayer, C. elegans, and a Drosophila brain.

Physics-based fluorophore model: brightness, photobleaching, background
Acquisition parameters change the resulting image: pinhole diameter, simultaneous vs sequential channels, z-stack spacing and depth
Teaches the trade-off behind each setting rather than a recipe to follow
Built from a decade of hands-on super-resolution and confocal experience
In active development