About Me

Hello! I’m Mike Traner, a recent PhD graduate in Biomedical Engineering, with a fervent passion for learning new technologies and tools, and applying them to develop technical solutions to improve people’s lives. Throughout my academic journey I applied my passion for device and process development to develop tools and support research leveraging cyborg sensors for chemical detection.

The driving intent behind my graduate research was to develop ways to record and process neural data from locusts to detect chemical compounds in the environment, especially signatures of hazards such as explosives. To that end I worked on the development of a wide-range of tools across multiple foundational projects, operating both independently and as part of interdisciplinary teams.

There were two areas of development that I particularly focused on. The first was the development of tools and processes for surgically implanting neural recording electrodes to enable robust recording performance, both for applications such as explosives detection, and to enable more advanced studies of the neural algorithms used for processing olfactory cues. The second area was the design and development of automated behavior and neural recording rigs, including stimulus delivery, neural and behavioral data recording, and data cleaning and analysis pipelines. These were used for studying the strategies used to navigate environments via olfactory data, and evaluating the performance of surgically-implanted electrodes. Some samples of each are displayed in my portfolio.

As I transition into industry I am eager to bring my expertise, creativity, and passion for engineering to new roles and applications. When not working on professional projects I enjoy tinkering in my workshop, or performing DIY projects and maintenance on my home. Some of the personal projects I’ve pursued are also included in my portfolio.

If you’d like to get in touch with me or learn more about the projects I’ve worked on, feel free to reach out on LinkedIn or look at my work on this portfolio, Github, or Google Scholar. Thank you for visiting my portfolio, and I look forward to exploring opportunities for collaboration on future endeavors!