Hi, I'm Tyler
Unlike most of my peers, I didn't know I wanted to be a scientist until much later in life, and how I discovered my innate fascination with the natural world was completely by chance...
My story
I am a first-generation college student, born & raised in the rural south of West Virginia at a time when enthusiasm for scientific endeavors was virtually non-existent. I come from a family of coal miners, several of which did not complete high school. The notion one could become a scientist was nonexistent in the world I grew up in.
I entered university as a Division 1 athlete with plans for medical school. After leaving athletics, I threw myself into pre-med coursework, community service, and hundreds of hours shadowing physicians in the clinic and operating room. Near the end of my senior year - worried my application might fall short - I voiced my concerns to a faculty mentor. He encouraged me to consider science, noting a strong aptitude I’d shown in his advanced molecular biology courses. Even a short Master’s, he said, would strengthen my future prospects. Since I had never been exposed to laboratory research, I decided to give it a try and joined his lab as a Master’s student.
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Despite how much I enjoyed the clinic, the excitement I found in the lab eclipsed everything. The thrill of being, even briefly, the only person who understands some small facet of a biological process was intoxicating. Within a few weeks, I knew I wanted a career in science. However, I also realized that although I could successfully complete the experiments, I recognized that I was not passionate about the line of research I was conducting.
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The insight the led me to my scientific interests came after reading chapters from Paul Katz and Alison Mercer's in Beyond Neurotransmission: Neuromodulation and its Importance for Information Processing (2012). Their writing crystallized my fascination with the molecular mechanisms that give sensory systems flexibility. I realized we cannot truly understand sensory processing without understanding how neuromodulators reshape those circuits. That insight shifted my trajectory. In summer 2015, I joined Andrew Dacks’ lab, where I quickly fell in love with studying neuromodulation and how internal state transforms sensory network function. Consequently, I transitioned into the PhD program to pursue the career I had finally found.​