neuroscience · biochemistry · too many side projects · too little time
somewhere between the
wet lab and a terminal
window, i found my thing.
junior. uw. biochemistry. two active labs, too many terminals, and not nearly enough sleep to justify any of it. short term? overzealousness. long term? maybe a surgeon. perhaps a scientist. probably both.
about
I got into research to pad my med school app. I stayed because I accidentally built a career.
I'm a junior at UW studying biochemistry and neuroscience. On any given week I'm doing primate neurosurgery in the Bair Lab, building protein design pipelines at Vanderbilt, and wondering how I'm functioning on five hours of sleep. Six labs, three schools, two coasts. Before all this I was doing CRISPR on TB macrophages, docking drug compounds, and writing C++ to model neural networks.
When I'm not in a lab I'm at Evergreen Hospital running EKGs and fitting CPAP masks, volunteering at Recovery Cafe, answering crisis texts on Crisis Text Line, or teaching orgo to students who are convinced they're going to fail (they're not, the textbook is just bad).
I also run The Overzealous Premed on YouTube. Nobody told me what actually mattered when I started this. So I tell everyone else. No filter, no polish, no "10 tips to get into Harvard" clickbait.
I like problems that don't fit in one field. Computation, biology, medicine, engineering. The best work happens at the edges where nobody's looking.
research
six labs, three institutions, one thread: computation meets biology. click bair lab or meiler lab for the deep dives.
Gu Lab · Harvard Medical School
Neurovascular Biology
HHMI Investigator Dr. Chenghua Gu. Applying XORI methodology to cardiovascular knockouts in mouse models. 12-week self-directed project investigating neurovascular coupling mechanisms and blood-brain barrier integrity.
planned: neurovascular validation
Bair Lab · University of Washington
Computational Neuroscience
Primate neurosurgery + computational analysis. Two-photon calcium imaging of cross-orientation suppression in macaque V1. Building custom analysis pipelines for neural population decoding and tuning curve characterization.
first-author preprint · SfN 2025 · WANPRC
Meiler Lab · Vanderbilt University
Computational Structural Biology
Alphavirus stabilization under $46M ARPA-H grant. BM5.5 benchmark across 257 complexes, 6,800+ structures. Rosetta-based protein docking and scoring function optimization for therapeutic antibody design.
first-author manuscript · vanderbilt symposium
Hawn Lab · University of Washington
Infectious Disease / Immunology
Investigated TB impact on MAPKAPK2 gene expression in human macrophages. Designed and executed CRISPR-Cas9 knockouts, ran RT-qPCR validation, BSL-2 cell culture, and Western blot quantification of downstream inflammatory signaling.
second-author publication in prep
Anderson Lab · University of Washington
Computational Drug Development
Virtual screening for rifampin replacement compounds targeting TB treatment resistance. AutoDock Vina molecular docking, ADMET profiling, and lead compound optimization with Python scripting for batch analysis of 10k+ candidate molecules.
UW research symposium
Stiber Lab · University of Washington
Computational Neuroscience
Modeled emergent neuronal network behaviors in dissociated cell cultures. Built C++ simulation engine and Python analysis pipeline for spike train statistics, burst detection, and small-world connectivity analysis.
simulation framework · data pipeline
clinical experience
1,900+ total hours across paid clinical roles, hospital volunteering, and physician shadowing across five specialties.
Medical Assistant, Heart Care Cardiology
Patient rooming, vitals, 12-lead EKGs, EMR documentation.
Medical Assistant, Sleep Medicine
Sleep study coordination, patient intake, CPAP fitting.
COPE Health Scholars
Hospital-based unit rotations, nursing support.
physician shadowing · 136 hours · 5 specialties · 12 physicians
neurology 54 hrs · 4 physicians
Dr. Pinky Agarwal · Evergreen
9 hrs
Botox for muscle spasms, Parkinson's ID and treatment.
Dr. Raghu Upender · Vanderbilt
12 hrs
Telemedicine, continuity clinic, cross-specialty overlap.
Dr. Winston Bell · Vanderbilt
18 hrs
Stroke clinic, stroke alerts, rapid functional testing.
Dr. Raymond Park · Evergreen
12 hrs
General neurology, nerve testing, alternative Botox.
Dr. Theodore Brown · Evergreen
3 hrs
MS, spinal cord symptoms, imaging techniques.
cardiology 38 hrs · 4 physicians
Dr. Laura Benes · Evergreen
14 hrs
Cardiac symptoms, sleep apnea workups, TTE controls.
Dr. Vikas Sharotri · Evergreen
15.5 hrs
AFib management, angiogram observation, EKG training.
Dr. William Getchell · Evergreen
6 hrs
Triple-stent, emergency STEMI, cath lab complications.
Dr. Radha Mehta · Evergreen
3 hrs
Cath conference, cangrelor cost-benefit analysis.
urology 22 hrs · 1 physician
Dr. Phillip May · Evergreen
22 hrs · 5 sessions
Robotic kidney surgery, stent placement, cauterization.
plastic surgery 10 hrs · 1 physician
Dr. Galen Perdikis · Vanderbilt
10 hrs · OR
Facelift, fat removal, scalpel technique, surgical hierarchy.
infectious disease 12 hrs · 1 physician
Dr. Thomas Hawn · UW Medical
12 hrs
HIV clinic, complex infections, triage pipeline.
side projects
things i built because i thought "how hard could it be?" from diffusion models to bare-metal kernels, here's the collection.
LandmarkDiff
facial surgery prediction from a smartphone photo
A latent diffusion model that generates photorealistic before/after facial surgery previews from standard 2D clinical photos. No CT scanner, no 3D scanning hardware, just a phone camera. Maps 530+ facial landmarks into a FLAME mesh for 3D-aware conditioning, then generates outcome previews via FLUX.1-dev with IP-Adapter identity preservation. Training on synthetic paired data with Triton inference on AWS.
Vision: Democratize surgical planning. Any patient, any clinic, any phone.
ICT God
full-stack trading journal
Next.js 14 app with Prisma ORM, PostgreSQL, and server components. Full trade lifecycle: log entries with ICT methodology tags (FVG, OB, liquidity sweeps), attach screenshots, journal session psychology, and review performance analytics. Custom session replay lets you walk through trade sequences. Built because every trading journal app I tried was either too simple or tried to be a Bloomberg terminal.
Vision: One place to log, review, and learn from every trade.
YouTube Pipeline
automated content production
End-to-end video production pipeline that takes a topic and outputs a publish-ready video. Script generation with structured prompts, text-to-speech via edge-tts with voice cloning, automated B-roll editing, thumbnail generation, and YouTube scheduling. FastAPI backend orchestrates Celery workers for each pipeline stage. n8n handles webhook triggers and notification workflows. One command to go from idea to uploaded video.
Vision: Idea to published video with a single command.
RAG Med
medical knowledge retrieval
Retrieval-augmented generation system for medical literature. Ingest clinical papers as PDFs, chunk them semantically, embed into ChromaDB, then query with natural language. Retrieval pipeline does hybrid search (dense + sparse), cross-encoder reranking, and grounded answer generation with source citations. Built for my own study sessions. Ask it a question about pharmacology and get an answer with the exact paper and page number.
Vision: Ask a question, get the paper and page number.
Rusty OS
bare-metal x86_64 kernel
Writing an operating system from scratch in Rust. Custom bootloader, VGA text mode driver, IDT-based interrupt handling, PS/2 keyboard driver, and a frame allocator for physical memory management. No standard library, no runtime, no libc. Just registers, page tables, and raw metal. Currently implementing a basic heap allocator and async executor for cooperative multitasking. Runs in QEMU, debugged with GDB stubs.
Vision: Understand computing from the metal up.
leadership & service
leadership
The Overzealous Premed
YouTube channel and peer mentorship program for pre-med students. I make videos about the premed journey because when I started, nobody told me what actually mattered vs what was noise. MCAT strategy, application walkthroughs, personal statement breakdowns, day-in-the-life content, school list building, interview prep, and honest conversations about the mental side of this path. I also run 1-on-1 mentorship sessions covering everything from "what should I even be doing right now?" to secondary essay reviews.
volunteering
Crisis Text Line Counselor
Trained crisis counselor providing real-time text-based support to people in their hardest moments. The training is intensive - active listening, risk assessment, collaborative problem-solving, de-escalation. Connection first, problem-solving later. One question at a time. Meeting people where they are, not where you think they should be.
Recovery Cafe Volunteer
Weekly volunteer at Recovery Cafe serving meals and building community with individuals recovering from addiction, mental health challenges, and homelessness. It's not about fixing anyone. It's about showing up consistently and treating people like people. The conversations over lunch matter more than the lunch.
publications & presentations
four papers cooking, five presentations done. see LinkedIn for the latest.
First-author. Cross-orientation suppression across cortical depth in macaque V1. arXiv preprint, target April 2026.
First-author. Benchmarking AlphaFold 2.3.2 and Boltz-1 on BM5.5 protein-protein complexes. Vanderbilt University.
Mid-author. Alphavirus vaccine development. Vanderbilt University.
Second author. TB/macrophage MAPKAPK2 gene expression study. University of Washington.
UW Research Symposium, Seattle. Cross-orientation suppression across cortical depth in macaque V1.
nov 2025 bair labSociety for Neuroscience, San Diego. Cross-orientation suppression across cortical depth in macaque V1.
dec 2025 bair labWANPRC Annual Conference, Seattle. Cross-orientation suppression across cortical depth in macaque V1.
aug 2025 meiler labVICB Summer Symposium, Nashville. Alphavirus vaccine development via computational stabilization.
dec 2024 anderson labUW Research Symposium, Seattle. Alternatives to rifampin in MDR-tuberculosis treatment.
tools i actually use
languages
computational research
ml / ai
web / infra
laboratory
certifications & daily drivers
mentorship & contact
The premed process felt way harder than it needed to be. Not because the material is impossible. Because nobody tells you what actually matters vs what's just noise.
I run 1-on-1 mentorship for pre-med students. MCAT strategy, application walkthroughs, personal statement feedback, school list building, interview prep, and the "what should I even be doing right now?" conversations.
Whether you're a freshman trying to figure out what research even means, a junior panicking about your personal statement, or someone who just needs to hear that it's normal to feel behind, I've probably been there.
Interested in mentorship, research collaboration, or just want to say what's up?