Imaging spreading depolarization
Parrish Lab, Cell Biology and Physiology · July 2025 – present
I set up the lab’s intrinsic optical signal imaging of spreading depolarization in brain slices, co-developing the protocol and writing the analysis software. That software became Swell, which segments the spreading wavefront with Segment Anything 2.1 and measures propagation speed, area recruited and recovery time. We validated it against DC electrophysiology and expert annotation and used it to characterize halorhodopsin-induced spreading depolarization. Since January 2026 I also lead the lab’s three-person programming team.
Swell on GitHub
Common-variant heritability of Alzheimer’s disease
Ridge Lab, Biology · April 2026 – present
APOE and the other known risk loci account for only part of the genetic risk for late-onset Alzheimer’s disease. I built a GCTA-GREML pipeline on BYU’s research computing cluster to estimate how much risk common variants explain, and how that splits between APOE, other established loci and the rest of the genome. The work runs from sample and variant quality control through relatedness and ancestry checks to tests of whether apparent signal comes from hard-to-sequence regions or recruitment cohort. I presented it at ASHG 2026, and a first-author manuscript is in preparation.