Catherine Rasgaitis

About Catherine Rasgaitis

Hi, I\'m Catherine and I\'m interested in everything! I am a Computer Science student at the University of Washington, Seattle.I\'m also minoring in Neural Computation and Engineering. I currently hold ML centric roles at UW\'s Orsborn Lab (neurotech) and Noble Lab (genomics). Come see my work at SfN Neuroscience 2024 in Chicago and the User Interface Software and Technology (UIST) 2024 conference in Pittsburg!🧠 I\'m currently the President of Synaptech, UW\'s neural engineering club! I work on cool projects like eye-controlled cars and music generation from neural feedback. I am also running an independent research project through Synaptech! I\'ve earned my own grants, built my own team, and had the opportunity to present a pilot study at the SANS 2024 conference. I hope to submit my research to a scientific journal. I am currently balancing two part-time jobs as a research fellow at the Allen Institute for Neural Dynamics and as a Peer Adviser at the Paul G Allen School. Last summer, I interned at CSHL (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) with Dr. Helen Hou. I was one of the 21 students selected for this program out of 900+ applicants! Following this internship, I spent the rest of the summer as part of the UW VISIONS 2024 Seagoing Expedition to perform oceanography research aboard the R/V Atlantis. I previously interned at NASA JPL (Jet Propulsion Laboratory) to work on scheduling communications for the Deep Space Network using deep reinforcement learning techniques. During the last academic year, I worked part time for the WA NASA Space Consortium as a mentor in the Michael P. Anderson program at the Museum of Flight.🧡 For fun, I enjoy making music and short films! I also love competing in hackathons & am a MLH Top 50 Hacker!I\'m in the process of making a personal/portfolio site as well - view it here: https://crasgaitis.github.io/

Experience

1. President

   Synaptech Rso

   May 2023 — Present

   Lead weekly meetings to teach topics like machine learning, data science, neuroanatomy, etc.Host workshops for beginner-friendly projects, like turning neural data into animated fractal patterns. Apply for grants, organize hackathons and guest speakers events.Increased club membership by tenfold.Additional Projects:Opticars - Project LeadEye-controlled Arduino cars, with AI-assisted driving.Looking Glass - Project LeadExperiment, how does eye movement change when we look at familiar vs novel vs morphed faces?Smart Music - ContributorGenerate original music compositions based on neural (EEG) feedback.

Education

• University of Washington

  Bachelor's degree

  2022 — 2025

• Highline College

  Associate of Science - AS

  2020 — 2022

• Stadium

  High School Diploma

  2018 — 2022