About me

I’m a data scientist, bioinformatics scientist, and neuroscientist.

I studied biochemistry at UCLA, earned my Ph.D. in neuroscience at Yale University, and performed postdoctoral research at the Salk Institute. My research on neural plasticity was fueled by my interests in learning. I investigated signaling mechanisms in a neurogenic niche and the molecular changes that occur within neurons in response to an organism having new experiences. A list of my publications can be found here.

My academic work led to life science industry positions. I initially worked at Fluidigm Corporation as a product applications scientist, a multi-faceted role that included generating customer-facing data analyses, educating internal staff and customers, and serving as a technical liasion for product management. From there, I served as a bioinformatics scientist, supporting R&D efforts. Examples of external-facing data content I generated can be found here. This was followed by fellowships at Insight Data Science and UCSF/UC Berkeley as a Johnson & Johnson Data Science Health Innovation Fellow, researching social determinants of health. When I was a Staff Machine Learning Researcher at Seer, I analyzed mass spectrometry proteomics data from patient cohorts, including a study on Alzheimer’s disease patients.

I have extensive experience performing independent research, analyzing and interpreting complex data sets, optimizing data analysis, and communicating my results through oral and written presentations. I can be reached at ben.lacar AT gmail.com.