Benjamin D. Pedigo

I am a fifth-year PhD candidate in the Deparment of Biomedical Engineering at Johns Hopkins University. I am advised by Joshua Vogelstein in the Neurodata lab. My work focuses on using statistical and computational techniques to help understand nanoscale connectomes.

I am also a developer of graspologic (formerly called GraSPy), an open-source Python package for doing statistical analyses of network data which we now co-develop with Microsoft Research. I am broadly interested in making data analysis techniques in neuroscience more accessible through open-source software.

I plan on graduating in June 2023 and am looking for research opportunities!

About me

I grew up in Lake Forest Park, WA, just north of Seattle. I received a B.S. in Bioengineering from the University of Washington. While I was there, I worked in Dr. Chet Moritz’s lab, investigating whether optogenetic techniques could help restore motor function after a spinal cord injury. I also spent a summer as an intern at the Allen Institute for Brain Science, working on a project to collect a nanoscale connectome from a cubic millimeter of mouse visual cortex. During my PhD, I was an intern with Team Essex at Microsoft Research, exploring techniques for graph and sequence embeddings and visualization.

Outside of research, I enjoy birdwatching, biking, backpacking, and bouldering.