Bachelor’s in Bioengineering, Regents Scholar, four years across three research labs.

The choice that defines the rest of the story was made before any of it: UC San Diego bioengineering over computer science at Carnegie Mellon, over Georgia Tech, over UCLA — picked on interest rather than strategy, and CS would very likely have set me up better professionally. That is the pattern the whole timeline rests on. At each fork, the curious option over the safe one.

The labs ran in sequence and moved steadily toward the nervous system: regenerative medicine in the Mali Lab (stem cell culture, fluid-flow testing of 3D-bioprinted artificial vasculature), then the Integrated Systems Neuroengineering Lab in 2016 — first exposure to Python and neural data simultaneously — then the Advanced Robotics and Controls Lab, building super-coiled polymer artificial muscles and a wearable assistive arm brace from CAD through 3D printing, machine-shop assembly, and moment testing. Industry filled the summers: iOS and watchOS development at VMware, hearing-technology R&D at Earlens, manufacturing engineering at Accuryn Medical.

The senior design project is the hinge: an EEG motor-imagery brain–computer interface driving navigation of a virtual environment. That is where neuroscience became deliberate rather than incidental.

And four years of club soccer, captain in the final year — the season the team won the league and regionals and reached nationals for the first time in school history.