Varshini Ramanathan

Email: varshini.ramanathan@tufts.edu

Varshini is responsible for guiding team members through higher-level computational work and imaging/image analysis. Varshini is the main point of contact with the post-doc and therefore, connect relevant resources from the Georgakoudi lab to our project such as existing protocols and models. Varshini has also been instructing Ash on using ODEs for MATLAB and imaging for all project members.

Arrietty Bui

Arrietty is responsible for developing co-cultures and writing the secondary injury protocol. With prior experience with TPEF imaging, Arri will work with Varshini to obtain and annotate images. Arri has been using her existing knowledge of computational modeling to find models for TBI chemical pathways. Working closely with Varshini, Arri is also communicating with Maria and the professor about possible alternatives for our project and training.

Email: thi.bui@tufts.edu

Ash Sze

Ash will be responsible for computational modeling and assisting with image analysis under guidance from Varshini  as she has experience from systems biology. The first task in computational modeling is to compile existing code that models glutamate excitotoxicity, lipofuscin, general brain metabolics and any other pathways relevant post TBI. These models will likely be used on MATLAB in the form of differential equations. Ideally, the models can successfully model chemical outputs given optical readouts.

Email: ash.sze@tufts.edu

Kerry Chen

Kerry is responsible for imaging and cell culturing. She is trained to use TPEF for imaging and, using her experience in cell culturing, guide Arrietty. Kerry receives Microglia cell culturing instruction alongside Arri by post-doc Maria. She assists with finding published protocols and online papers (such as well numbers, replicates, time points, duration of chemical exposure) to compile a draft protocol. Kerry has compiled many computational modeling papers, many of which contain useful ODEs for the model.

Email: xiaoke.chen@tufts.edu

Acknowledgement

We would especially like to thank our post-doc Maria for her help during this project and for being an amazing mentor during this process. We would also like to thank Dr. Kaplan and Dr. Brown for their ongoing support throughout the semester, and Olivia Foster for her wonderful feedback and advice.