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Born in Baja California, Mexico,
David came to live to the United
States in 1995. He attended SDSU,
Imperial Valley Campus and obtained a B.A. in Mathematics in the spring of
2006. By fall of 2006, he moved to San
Diego to join the Computational Science Doctoral
Program. Computational Science gave him the opportunity to get in touch
with the natural sciences and perform research in this area. Currently David is doing research in cardiology. During
this past year, he spent a great amount of time learning |
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wet-bench methods
and protocols. The topics of investigation in the laboratory so far have been
varied, yet the most important include contractility measurements in both
adult and neonatal rat heart cells, calcium transient measurements, gene
expression changes and gene knockdown.
The challenge that currently arises in this area of research is the need for
perfection. The fact that David works and performs research on living
organisms requires a need for perfection, since one minor mistake can spoil a
week worth’s of work. Money is also a big limiting factor in this area
of research since repeating the experiments is often very expensive.
David feels the idea of having investigators in the natural sciences interact
with investigators in the mathematical and computers sciences is a great
idea. Applying mathematical and computer methods, he hopes to be able to
optimize methods in the wet-bench and in the analysis of data. This reduces
the complexity and the cost of the experiments and improves the quality of
the data acquired. In his personal case, the use of image analysis methods
and data analysis techniques increases the way in which data acquired in the
lab is analyzed and facilitates the acquisition of conclusions. The image
analysis methods currently performed by David will open a new window of
investigation since a method for a valid neonatal cardiocyte
contractility is not yet available.
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