Scientific Literature Review

I’m a passionately curious scientific/technical generalist. I can get up to speed quickly on the basics of most fields and put together an evidence-based assessment of what the published science has to say about your question.

I can give you an impartial, independent angle on your question, making sense of the public information that exists and being candid about what the literature can and can’t tell us.

Consulting projects I’ve done in the past include:

• Evidence-based, personalized problem-solving for medical issues — what treatments, both standard and experimental, look most promising for your condition, and what are their risks and benefits?

  • I’ve found this is especially helpful for people considering a major decision (like surgery) or people trying to navigate a zoo of potential interventions for a chronic health issue.

• Technical due diligence on a new technology for startup founders and investors — what’s the current state of the art and the trajectory of progress? What can and can’t the tech do? What problems still need to be solved and what milestones need to be hit before the tech succeeds at a given goal?

  • This can be helpful for evaluating the credibility of a particular project or team

  • Or for planning a technical roadmap

Some public examples:

• Transcranial focused ultrasound neuromodulation series (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8)

• Treatments for sarcopenia

• Gas stoves are probably not dangerous

• Interventions to increase female reproductive lifespan

• Wearable hormone sensors

• Industrializing mammalian cell culture

Communicating Your Vision

I’m good at communicating scientific and technical topics to a general audience, with a focus on being clear, engaging, and compelling.

I have experience creating:

• website copy

• marketing materials (white papers, decks, brochures)

• blog posts and magazine articles

• live presentations/talks 

Some public examples:

• What does the Cerebellum Do Anyway?

• The Transistor Cliff

Data Analysis

I’m an experienced data scientist who can analyze datasets, answer questions with statistical and machine-learning methods, and visualize the results.

If it can be done in a spreadsheet or an iPython notebook, I can make it happen.

Market Research and Techno-Economic Analysis

I can use public information or private datasets to answer questions like:

• What’s the market size?

• Who else is doing it?

• Do the unit economics work? (And what would have to change to make them work?)

Some public examples:

• Analyzing scaling laws and GPU performance trends to estimate that AI computation capabilities won’t grow more than 3 OOMs between 2023 and 2030.

• Planned grid-scale energy storage projects over the next decade are inadequate, by at least a factor of 7, for the goal of doubling the share of clean energy globally by 2030.

My Process

I usually like to start with an introductory call.

You can tell me about your goals and we can scope what I’ll be doing for you and the expected timeline.

I can show you outlines or drafts along the way, or just present you with a finished piece, as you prefer.

By default, all my consulting projects will be confidential, but sometimes clients give their permission for me to publish a version of my work as a public resource, scrubbed of identifying information.