sheldon's academic research

If I were asked to explain my research interests in one sentence, I would say, "My goal is to increase the coherence of collective consciousness by creating tools which will allow more efficient and effective research in all fields of study." If asked about my motivations, I would say, "I am deeply distraught by the suffering created through disease, poverty, war, and crime, and I don't think I can fix all of them on my own."

It all started with a dive into scholarly political science literature and current event analysis in high school as a competitive debater (2003-2007). After accepting an opportunity to debate for Idaho State University (2007-2010), I moved through a large variety of obscure literature bases which sort of blur the boundaries between political science and philosophy - Georgio Agamben, a bit of Micheal Foucault, and eventually a (theoretically) aggressive confrontation with a Slovenian scholar named Slavoj Zizek - a Lacanian sociologist who has developed an interesting critique of ideology.

During this time I also worked in a lab in the biology department studying electrophysiology (voltage gated sodium channels) for about eight months. Once I had a grasp on the context and magnitude of projects we were working on, I did not feel ready to commit the time necessary to continue working in the lab. On top of this, data analysis was very monotonous and tedious. I was very frustrated because I knew that dozens of labs across the country had already conducted the experiments I was working on, but since we were not sharing information, I was spending ALL of my time re-running the same experiments to find (hopefully) very similar data. It was very discouraging to know that I was wasting so much time, so I figured it would be better to help other scientists/engineers collaborate more effectively rather than to re-invent the wheel. Even within our own lab, data mismanagement was the single most costly error that we would inevitably make.

By this point in time (2008-2009) I was also disappointed with the structural limitations of a traditional university. I chose to leave Idaho State and accept a scholarship at Maharishi University of Management, a small private school with the aim of developing the student holistically (2009-2010). At MUM, I spent a lot of time with Dr. Fred Travis, exploring the learning process and experiencing effects of Transcendental Meditation on the brain. I also took courses exploring the scientific research of TM and other forms of meditation.

My work outside of class eventually accumulated into an independent research project on personality development - overviews of varying theories (Dabrowski, Freud, Lacan, and Maharishi) as an exploration of how I relate to my research and schoolwork.

During 2010, I focussed on exploring the research opportunities available to me. I looked through a lot of programs, a lot of papers, and a lot of schools to see where my interests really lie. My problem is that I have TOO MANY interests. Some of the more interesting things I dug up include:

• Juliana Freire's VisTrails project (scientific discovery workflow management software)
• ANYTHING from HP's Social Computing Lab (too much cool stuff to list here)
• HP's Intelligent Infrastructure Lab (especially CeNSE)
• Computer-integrated surgical systems
• The work of Jacque Fresco
• Ross Anderson's book on security engineering
• Jure Leskovec's work with social network analysis
  
  
  Unfortunately, MUM's size limits its research potential. With literally only a handful of research professors on campus, I decided to move back to Idaho State University (2010-2011) to continue my foundational schoolwork and continue my interrogation into the relationships between wellbeing and engineering.

  Currently I am taking time off of college to save money for graduate school, sharpen my web development skills, train as an athlete, and establish my business.

  If you are interested in contacting me, please use the contact form.