Derek is the co-founder and President of The Wet Lab and organizes its monthly Open Bioinformatics Study Group. He has been working with startup companies since 2023, and hopes to build San Diego its first dedicated community space for bio-hacking. Derek is a co-organizer for the San Diego Python Users Group and the San Diego Open Bioinformatics Group (in partnership with the Wet Lab). He is an advocate for open source software and the democratization of scientific research.
Indrani Ganguly-Fitzgerald, Ph. D.
Indrani is a co-founder and vice-President of The Wet Lab.She is a Neurogeneticist, and supporter of egalitarian and independent scientific pursuit. Indranis graduate work was conducted in the laboratories of Dr.s Trudy Mackay and Robert Anholt, at North Carolina State University, and involved the quantitative and molecular characterization of a unique behavioural gene found in both males and females, but differentially processed to produce male-specific and female-specific behavioural outputs. Subsequently as a Fellow in Experimental Neurobiology, at the California think-tank, The Neurosciences Institute (founded by Nobel prize winner, Dr. Gerald Edelman), she worked on the molecular and behavioural genetics of sleep and memory, establishing a model for the rapid identification of genes involved in sleep-dependent memory formation. Indrani teaches Genetics, Behavioral Genetics, and Biological Psychology at the University of San Diego, and loves anything related to genes, the brain, behavior, evolutionary processes, experimental design, theatre, art, dance and literature.