Premiile grupului de la Observatorui - Studentul Luca Hategan din Mississauga
EDUCATION
HBSc University of Toronto, Mississauga May 2022
Dual Major in Chemistry and Biology
HONORS AND AWARDS
Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy USRP Grant Recipient 2020
A grant received for a research period of 4 months,
during my time as a summer research trainee.
RESEARCH EXPERIENCE
Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON. 2018 to 2020
Laboratory Assistant, Hampson Lab, Dr. David R. Hampson
• Performed literature searches at the request of the P.I. or other researchers in the lab
• Performed a wide array of clerical work, such as: ordering supplies for the University
of Toronto Medical store (MedStore), washing lab equipment like burettes, beakers
and scalpels, and autoclaving various pipette tips, beakers, and gel electrophoresis
solutions, as needed.
• Frequently assisted in preparing tissue samples for microscopy, such as by washing
away OCT solution from mouse and rat brain cross-sections.
• Assisted with and observed perfusions, organ harvesting, and other surgical
procedures performed by lab members on rat and mice model organisms.
Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON. 2020 to 2020
Research Assistant, Hampson Lab, Dr. David R. Hampson
• Worked with the DeepLabCut (DLC) neural network as part of a project to quantify
hyperactive phenotypes in Fmr1 KO rats, and compare these motilities to WT rats.
• Trained and refined several neural networks and used them to analyze a large set of
video data collected from home-cage recordings.
• Developed software in Python to analyze and post-process the output data of DLC.
This involved computing the Euclidean Distance between frames for the recording
period across the various labels, summing these distances per hour, computing the
area under these curves, and statistically analyzing the difference between WT and
Fmr1 KOs to determine if a significant difference in motility was observed.
• Performed surgery on rat model organisms for brain harvesting and helped prepare
harvested tissue samples for western blot analysis. Helped prepare tissues for
microscopy by applying/washing away OCT solution to sample cross sections.
Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON. 2020 to 2021
Research Assistant, Hampson Lab, Dr. David R. Hampson
• Data mining the Encyclopedia of DNA Elements (ENCODE) database to locate
potential cis-regulatory DNA regions specific to inhibitory, GABAergic neurons in
mice.
• Developed software in Python to process ENCODE ATAC-seq and ChIP-seq Next
Generation Sequencing (NGS) datasets, quantifying high read coverage regions in
areas of interest as potentially cis-regulatory.
• Used various libraries in R such as Gviz and Rsamtools to create models for genes of
interest, along with annotating any regions of interest that were known and/or
discovered during the project.
• Developed software in R using the TFBSTools library to search known and
discovered motifs of interest for transcription factor binding sites by sequence
querying the JASPAR database.
Faculty of Applied Science, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON. 2021 to present
Research Assistant in Neuroscience, XCELLeration, Dr. Hendrik Steenland
• Performed literature searches to develop use cases for the DeepLabCut (DLC) neural
network in various fields of research.
• Developed software in python to post-process DLC output data for the purpose of
further downstream analysis, such as with support vector classifier machine learning
techniques.
• Assisting engineers in optimizing DLC for use with cloud based and ASIC protocols.
• Combining data produced by DLC with electrophysiological and calcium imaging
recordings to determine which parts of the brain are responsible for certain
movements in mice model organisms.
PUBLICATIONS
Journal Publications
1. Wong, H., Hooper, A. W. M., Niibori, Y., Lee, S. J., Hategan, L. A., Zhang, L.,
Karumuthil-Melethil, S., Till, S. M., Kind, P. C., Danos, O., Bruder, J. T., & Hampson,
D. R. (2020). Sexually dimorphic patterns in electroencephalography power spectrum
and autism-related behaviors in a rat model of fragile X syndrome. Neurobiology of
Disease, 146. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nbd.2020.105118
LANGUAGES
English: Native Language
Romanian: Full proficiency
French: Intermediate proficiency
COMPUTER SKILLS
Programming:
• Fluency in Python and R
• Proficient in Git.
• Proficient in using the Linux command line for applications such as SAM.
RESEARCH INTERESTS
• I am interested in how proteins interact with DNA and the techniques available to
study these interactions, and furthermore how these interactions can be manipulated
to achieve some form of desired effect.
o For example, through one of my past research projects, the primary question
studied was how to use computational methods to discover transcription factor
binding sites that are specific to the inhibitory, GABAergic class of neurons in
mice, with the eventual goal of using these transcription factor binding sites in
a custom viral vector to better drive a target proteins’ expression in these
inhibitory neurons, in vivo.
• I am interested in computational and quantitative techniques as they relate to
neuroscience specific applications, for example calcium imaging, electrophysiology
and working with spike sorting algorithms
• I am interested in chemical synthesis techniques and broadly in fields of
organic/inorganic chemistry involved in the pharmaceutical industries.
• I am interested in studying the physical properties of proteins and small molecules
through various techniques, such as: 1D/2D-NMR, NOESY, CD-spectroscopy,
MALDI and ESI, and calorimetry techniques such as DSC and ITC.
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Josefina Moruz 1/3/2022 |
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