Me giving the valedictory speech at PhD Convocation, May 13 2016

Hello world! My name is Teon Brooks and this is my blog :) I recently finished my graduate studies (#TeonDefends) in cognitive neuroscience at NYU and started a fellowship through the Mozilla Science Lab. I made a commitment to myself to blog about my experiences, both old and new. Here are some broad topics that I will generally talk about:

science + code

Science is changing, some aspects more rapidly than others. Scientific computing is no longer a topic of concern for physicists, mathematicians, and informagicians, it has permeated all the avenues of scientific research. However, lots of scientists are still not being trained to code. Everything nowadays tends to be computer-oriented, from running experiment protocols, and acquiring data to data processing and analysis. I quickly realized early on in graduate studies that it would be imperative to develop these skills (many blogs to come on this). I got involved with an open-source community and it has greatly improved my science career.

#opensource #openscience #neuroscience

I am a strong believer that Science demands that all of these steps be transparent, accessible, and open. I will use this blog to discuss the current state of science, primarily in psychology and neuroscience, and how coding, technology, and informatics are fundamentally changing our approach to asking and answering questions.

+ tech

I am a huge tech nerd 🤓. Ever since I was a kid I have been interested in computers, electronics, how things work in general. I only recently discovered the field of electrical engineering. I will blog about my foray into EE: circuits, arduinos, raspberry pis, and coursera. Expect plenty of posts about the latest geeky projects I am working on such as this workshop on building low-cost research equipment for cognitive science.

Celebrated bday 3wks ago in Bangkok during #DIYSciThai workshop teaching #openscience #opensource #diy #innovation pic.twitter.com/AwrTBM56Fm

— Teon is on Mastodon @teon@data-folks.masto.host (@teonbrooks) July 18, 2016

+ travel

I really love traveling. As a scientist, I am really aspired by the story of Hermann Ebbinghaus. After he finished his studies, he kinda just traveled around for a while supporting himself as a tutor and visiting lecturer, and he did research on himself at home. That’s so badass. Through this blog, I will occasionally mentally (or physically) revisit some of the places I’ve gone to, and I will try to keep tabs on all the new trips I make.

If you’re interested, follow me on my journey, my life after the phd.