📍 San Francisco Bay Area • 🇺🇸 US Citizen • 🔬 Translational aging biology • ✨ AI for science

Ph.D.-trained scientist in the biology of aging, applying rigorous experimental design and scientific judgment to questions where confidently-wrong answers are common. Routine user of Claude and Claude Code for analysis, coding, and literature work; interested in building evaluations that probe where frontier models fail in biology.

• 🤖 Evaluating frontier AI models on scientific reasoning tasks in biology
• 🔍 Identifying capability gaps in experimental design and mechanistic inference
• 💊 Translational strategies for stress resilience and healthy aging
• 🧫 Cell non-autonomous regulation of autophagy and proteostasis

🤖 AI & Computation: Claude & Claude Code (daily), Anthropic API, ChatGPT, Cursor, Python, R, MATLAB, survival analysis (Cox PH, Kaplan–Meier), GraphPad Prism

📊 Bioinformatics: RNA-seq pipelines (STAR, DESeq2, clusterProfiler, ggplot2), pathway enrichment, differential expression

🧪 Wet Lab: C. elegans genetics (CRISPR/Cas9, RNAi, lifespan & thermotolerance assays, microinjection, transgenic strain construction), mammalian cell culture, PBMC isolation & processing, flow cytometry (FACS), qPCR, immunostaining, cryosectioning, RNA-seq library prep (Illumina TruSeq), plasmid cloning, mouse muscle stem cell biology, optogenetics

🔬 Imaging: Immunofluorescence, confocal microscopy (Zeiss LSM980 Airyscan), 3D segmentation (Imaris, ImageJ, CellProfiler), fluorescent reporter strain design

🗣️ Languages: English (native), Spanish (professional)

Garrison Lab, Buck Institute / USC

• Discovered that the neuropeptide nematocin, an oxytocin/vasopressin homolog, suppresses the heat shock response in C. elegans; first known endogenous inter-cellular signaling molecule with this function; first-author manuscript in preparation
• Built RNA-seq differential expression and pathway enrichment pipeline in R (STAR, DESeq2, clusterProfiler), identifying 42 DE genes after heat shock, including 1.9-fold upregulation of autophagy receptor sqst-1
• Established lifespan, thermotolerance, and RNAi workflows using novel C. elegans strains generated via genetic crossing; demonstrated autophagy-dependence of the survival phenotype via lgg-1 RNAi knockdown and Cox proportional hazards modeling
• President (2024–2025) and Vice President (2023–2024), Buck Institute Multicultural Trainee Association; led five-member team delivering professional development, institute-wide events, and STEM outreach to underrepresented Bay Area schools

Brack Lab, UCSF

• Isolated and characterized satellite cells from murine skeletal muscle to study age-associated changes in stem cell function; performed cryosectioning, immunostaining, and flow cytometry to evaluate lineage composition and regenerative potential

Varian Medical Systems (now Siemens Healthineers)

• Designed and executed in vitro assays evaluating DNA damage and repair mechanisms following radiation exposure; isolated and processed PBMCs from human samples; contributed to AACR 2019 conference abstract

• Rodriguez A.T. et al. "Neuropeptide Regulation of the Heat Shock Response." Manuscript in preparation (Garrison Lab).
• Wang W., Flury A.G., Rodriguez A.T. (co-first authors), et al. "A role for worm cutl-24 in background- and parent-of-origin-dependent ER stress resistance." BMC Genomics 23, 842 (2022).
• Aging Biology Evaluation — lifespan.andrewtrodriguez.com. Deployed Next.js site presenting a 1,379-gene evaluation of Claude Sonnet 4.6 on a longevity-influence prediction task from the GenAge model organisms database; two-call solver-advisor architecture with forced tool use; LLM grader validated against hand-grading (Cohen's κ = 0.79).

• 🌐 Website: andrewtrodriguez.com
• 💼 LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/andrew-rodriguez