Gary Robert Wilkins

Background

About Gary Robert Wilkins

My exposure to scientific research and its corresponding culture of curiosity came early at the age of 16. I was invited to apply and participate in NASA DEVELOP (Digital Earth Virtual Environment and Learning Outreach Project). In collaboration with scientists from the University of New Mexico at Albuquerque and private-sector engineers, I synthesized a wind energy feasibility plan adopted by New Mexico's then second-largest energy firm, Kit Carson Co-op. My team also informed proactive, pre-emptive measures using satellite imagery, predicting wildfires. Since then, I've been unwavering in my certainty that academic scientific research is what I want to do with my life. Over the next 17 years, a trajectory emerged. I worked on a team at UCLA's Institute of Pure and Applied Mathematics, collaborating with the Aerospace Corporation, optimizing connectivity among low-earth and fixed orbit satellites. I investigated links between diabetes and macular edema at UNC-Chapel Hill's physics department. I studied the migration of inter- and projection neurons in the early embryonic mouse brain and cilia dynamics in postnatal mice. I constructed an fMRI analysis pipeline for UNC-Chapel Hill's neuroimaging faculty. Now I study protein-protein interactions in the Murphy Group at Carnegie Mellon for my doctoral research. I believe that this work will constitute a foundation for several topics of great interest. It could facilitate probes into the origins of trafficking defects with G-protein coupled receptors. Similarly, it could also provide clues as to what cellular and even environmental contributions to protein complex development predispose neurodegeneration.