Research

Granatum Bioworks lab bench during sequencing sample prep
Ongoing, Jun 2026 – Present · Monterrey, México

Genomics & Bioinformatics Engineering Intern — Granatum Bioworks

At Granatum, I've been working on a pipeline that estimates biological age from a saliva sample — no blood draw needed. I process Oxford Nanopore sequencing data through MinKNOW, Dorado, SAMtools, and Bismark to pull DNA methylation values, then run them through epigenetic clocks like Horvath, DunedinPACE, PhenoAge, and PhysAge to estimate biological age. I built the pipeline end to end, from raw sequencing data to structured, client-ready reports, and ran the full molecular biology side too — DNA extraction, library prep, sequencing, and QC.

Oxford Nanopore sequencing · DNA methylation · epigenetic clocks · bioinformatics pipelines · Python · Linux

Skin-on-chip microfluidic device work at Laboratory of the Future, Bordeaux
Completed, Jun – Aug 2025

Research Intern — Laboratory of the Future (LOF), Bordeaux, France

In Bordeaux, I worked on lab-on-chip systems — specifically skin-on-chip microfluidic devices built from hydrogels. My focus was understanding how pressure changes flow behavior inside these chips: I ran switching experiments under a microscope, then wrote MATLAB scripts to calculate residence times and quantify fluid transport, feeding directly into validating the devices. I also worked with an international research team on getting cell encapsulation and viability right within the hydrogels.

microfluidics · lab-on-chip · hydrogels · MATLAB · microscopy

CareAlert wearable paging system hardware prototype
Ongoing, Jan 2025 – Present

Researcher, CareAlert Team — Global Social Impact Fellowship (Creative Inquiry), Lehigh University

CareAlert is a project I'm still actively part of. My team is building a low-cost wearable paging system for maternal health clinics in Sierra Leone — I designed and prototyped the hardware from breadboard up, and helped engineer an off-network wireless communication system built for clinical environments with no reliable cell service or Wi-Fi. The work has led to two publications: our paper on the paging system is in press at IEEE GHTC 2025, and I'm a co-author on a related paper presented at DMD 2026.

embedded systems · low-resource healthcare · wireless communication · hardware prototyping

Publications
  • O. Meyer, R. Ruiz, et al., "Designing an Off-Network Paging System to Improve Continuity of Patient Care in Low-Resource Settings," IEEE GHTC 2025, Colorado School of Mines, Oct. 2025 (In Press)
  • P. Natarajan, L. Hamamoto, O. Meyer, R. Ruiz, M. Young, A. John, E. Obeysekare, K. Mehta, "The Power of a Ping: Leveraging Alerts for Improved Health Outcomes in Low-Resource Settings," Proceedings of DMD2026, Minneapolis, MN, 2026
Soft matter physics research setup in Prof. Ou-Yang's lab
Completed, Jan – Aug 2025

Research Assistant — Prof. Daniel Ou-Yang, Lehigh University

Before any of the bioelectronics work, I spent time in Dr. Daniel Ou-Yang's lab studying the physics of soft materials — specifically how Carbopol 980 hydrogels behave under different ionic and mechanical conditions. I ran experiments combining microscopy, particle tracking, and gel rheology, then analyzed the datasets in MATLAB and Python to quantify Brownian motion trends. It's where I first learned how to turn messy experimental data into something that actually informs the next experiment.

soft matter physics · particle tracking · gel rheology · MATLAB · Python