Phil Brooks, PhD
Teaching Highlights
Build a scientist a microscope, and you enable one breakthrough. Teach a scientist to build microscopes and you enable a lifetime of breakthroughs.
Teaching
Biography
I love to solve problems, and the scientific problems I find most fascinating are those in biological research. In particular, I am intrigued by the problems of getting information out of (for scientific research) and into (for engineering) biological systems. To solve these problems, I develop (and equip others to develop) new instrumentation.
After a wide-ranging undergraduate degree at Princeton, I completed my PhD research with Adam Cohen at Harvard, where I developed techniques and instrumentation for biological voltage imaging with applications in neuroscience. During part of this time, I was a lead contributor and project manager of an open-source software package for bi-directional microscopy.
Even more than solving problems myself, I enjoy equipping others to solve problems they care about. I do this through teaching, collaboration, and informal discussion.
Teaching
Science and medicine rely on good instrumentation and people who understand it. My goal is to train well-rounded students who are able to understand, apply, and develop cutting edge instrumentation techniques to solve the scientific problems they find compelling.