Nikhil Nageshwar Inturi

I am thrilled to share my experience as a Data Science and Neuroinformatics Intern here at the Center for Advanced Pain Studies (CAPS), UTD. At the Center for Advanced Pain Studies, we aggressively pursue research aimed at alleviating suffering from pain and improving the lives of people with chronic pain and migraine.

As a Data Science and Neuroinformatics Intern at CAPS, I am responsible for developing and managing pipelines for analyzing various types of sequencing data, including single-cell, spatial, ATAC-sequencing, and bulk RNA-sequencing. Additionally, I had an opportunity to explore the analysis of non-coding RNA datasets, in particular microRNAs. These are small RNA molecules that regulate gene expression by binding to target messenger RNAs, either promoting their degradation or inhibiting their translation. This project is critical to gaining a deeper understanding of the pathways that underlie neuropathy and chronic pain.

I spearheaded the Neuron Detection Project by building hundreds of FastAI and yolov5 models for analyzing visium lumbar images. What began as a small component of the visium pipeline evolved into a significant project involving extensive experimentation with cross-validations, hyper-parameter tuning, and albumentations. We are still making more progress on this by the day. Special acknowledgment goes to Eric Meyers from Battelle and Diana Tavares Ferreira for their invaluable guidance throughout this project.

Beyond my primary responsibilities, I actively engaged in exploring new pipelines and methodologies, significantly influenced by the mentorship of Diana Tavares Ferreira. Her expertise in Computational Neuroscience profoundly shaped my understanding during this internship. I am also grateful to Ted Price, Mark Chavez, and the entire CAPS team for their support and encouragement. And, I had the privilege of sharing my knowledge with undergraduate students from diverse disciplines, imparting insights into the analysis and pipelines developed here at CAPS.

From Left to Right: Diana Tavares Ferreira, PhD and Nikhil Nageshwar Inturi.

I extend my heartfelt gratitude to my Program Director, Bill Hefley, Ph.D., COP, CMBE, and Program Manager, Fatima Raad, as well as the professors at the Naveen Jindal School of Management, UT Dallas, for their continuous support throughout my master's journey and during my internship, which has contributed significantly to my growth as a Data Scientist.

I am deeply appreciative of the opportunities of learning, the challenges overcome, and the pipelines created during my time at CAPS. I will keep this bio bug going!