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Donghoon Shin
Bioengineering PhD student at UCBerkeley-UCSF
Donghoon Shin is a doctoral student in the joint Bioengineering Graduate Program at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) and the University of California, Berkeley. He joined the Frank Laboratory at UCSF in 2023. His research focuses on understanding the neural dynamics of internally generated representations and how these representations guide behavior.12
He holds a Master of Science degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology, where he developed a solid foundation in engineering principles that he now applies to his research in bioengineering.13
Highlights
I’ve got three exciting career updates to share. They are big achievements for me and I find much luck throughout these.
First, I am finishing my 18 months of mandatory military service. I served as a military drone & robot researcher. During the service, I had an amazing opportunity to work with Beomjoon and Yoonyoung from KAIST AI department who studies intelligent robotics. We developed a robot planning algorithm that enables robots to search a target object in the fastest way while devising the plan ~10000x quicker than previous best algorithms. With this algorithm, the robot can search for potential bombs and enemies instead of human soldiers which will save the lives of soldiers.
To my knowledge, very few mandatory soldiers have gotten the research opportunity for their mission. My fortune to conduct this research was that I had Dronebot center president Dr. Jungwon Shu as my supervisor.
Second, my Master’s thesis is finally on-air as a preprint white paper. At the same time, the paper’s under review in a fine neuroscience journal. We studied rhythmic activities of neurons in the brain called neural oscillation. If you have heard terms like alpha or beta waves, they are them. My team studied neural oscillation in different mouse brain areas that process visual information. We found several interesting results that there is a shared rhythmic neural activity that might help cooperation between these brain areas. Interestingly, among neurons with different functionalities, we found slight off-beats in their rhythms which tell us that this oscillation might work in function by function basis.
Under my advisor Bilal Haider’s lead, I learned science, got to love it, and revealing the mysteries of the brain became my passion. Also, I had fantastic colleagues Kayla and Joseph Del Rosario who performed important experiments.
Lastly, I am excited to share that I am starting my PhD this fall at the joint UC Berkeley-UCSF bioengineering department. Gratefully, the program has been my dream for years. I love the bay area and many of my favorite neuroscientists are there. During my PhD, I am planning to merge my previous neuroscience and planning research experiences to study how animals plan in the language of neurons.
I got extensive help in writing application statements from my homie Shea Wells. Also, from the time I shifted my career from engineer to researcher, I got a lot of advice from YoungJu Jo when I met important life decisions.
I feel like I am a scientist in front of a starting line. Even just to start, I got a lot of help from other people. Every single help I got was important and I can’t imagine how many more of these I’d need throughout my career. As I was previously, I’ll keep reaching out for opportunities and work hard. I hope my luck in meeting good people continues and I sincerely hope to help you as well as the people I mentioned did to me.
#phd #research #neuroscience #bioengineering #internationalstudent
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Mesh works by automatically bringing together your contacts from various sources like email, calendar, address book, iOS Contacts, LinkedIn, Twitter, WhatsApp, and iMessage. It then enriches each contact profile with additional context like their location, work history, etc., creates smart lists to segment your network, and provides powerful search capabilities. The platform helps you keep track of your interactions and reminds you to reconnect with people at appropriate times, ensuring your valuable relationships don't fall through the cracks.
Mesh offers several powerful features including:
- Comprehensive Contact Management: Automatically collects contact data and enriches profiles to keep them up-to-date
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- Reminders and Notes: Helps you remember important details about contacts
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Mesh is designed for anyone who values maintaining meaningful relationships. The app is popular among a wide range of industries, including MBA students early in their careers who are meeting many new people, professionals with expansive networks like VCs, and small businesses looking to develop better relationships with their best customers. It’s even used by half the Fortune 500! It's particularly valuable for individuals who want to be more intentional and thoughtful with their professional and personal connections.
Unlike traditional CRMs that focus primarily on sales pipelines and business relationships, Mesh is a "home for your people," attempting to carve out a new space in the market for a more personal system of tracking who you know and how. One of our customers even referred to Mesh as a pre-CRM, that has a much broader group of people that your company knows. Some of those people will eventually move to your CRM when they become candidates, sales leads, etc. Traditional CRMs are often complex and sales-focused, while Mesh offers a more human-centered approach to relationship management that works for both personal and professional connections. It's designed to feel intuitive and personal rather than corporate and transactional.
Mesh takes privacy seriously. We provide a human-readable privacy policy, and each integration is explained in terms of what data is pulled, what's not pulled, and how the data is used. Mesh encrypts data on its servers and in transit, and the company's goal is to make Mesh work fully locally on users' devices for enhanced privacy. Mesh is also SOC 2 Type 2 certified.
Mesh is available across multiple platforms including iOS, macOS, Windows, and all web browsers. Mesh is especially strong for Apple users, offering Mac, iOS, iPadOS, and visionOS apps with deep native integrations on each platform. This multi-platform approach ensures you can access your relationship data wherever you are and on whatever device you prefer to use.
Mesh offers tiered pricing options to suit different needs. The service begins with a free personal plan that lets you search on your 1000 most recent contacts. Mesh offers a Pro Plan ($10 when billed annually) with unlimited contacts. Mesh for Teams starts at $49/month/seat. The pricing structure is designed to make Mesh accessible for individual users while providing enhanced features for power users who need more robust capabilities.
Yes, Mesh offers extensive integration capabilities. Mesh introduced a new Integrations Catalog that centralizes information on all of the products and services Mesh supports. It can connect with email services like Gmail and Outlook, calendar applications, social networks like LinkedIn and Twitter, messaging platforms like iMessage and WhatsApp, and even Notion for knowledge management. Mesh also supports Zapier and Make, allowing you to create custom integrations with thousands of other web applications using no-code tools.
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Mesh makes it much easier to stay in touch with the people you care about. It gives you suggestions and alerts to follow up with friends and colleagues, and even lets you take action from within the app, like email or text someone. Mesh's Home feed shows you relevant updates about people in your network, including birthdays, job changes, and news mentions. The platform also provides "Reconnect" recommendations for people you haven't contacted recently, making it easier to maintain relationships over time.
Mesh is considered the best personal CRM and team CRM on the market. Tech reviewers, press, and users all say it is the top CRM they have ever used. Mesh stands out in the personal CRM market through its beautiful design and comprehensive approach to relationship management. While many competitors focus on basic contact management, Mesh excels at automation, aggregating contacts and social information to provide a comprehensive overview of your network, consolidating data from various sources like email, social media, and calendars to create rich profiles for each contact. Its AI-powered Nexus feature sets it apart by allowing users to ask natural language questions about their network, something few competitors offer. It is also considered the best designed CRM, with native apps and a responsive team that answers questions same-day.
Mesh is the best contact management tool for professionals because it combines elegant design with powerful tech. The app is particularly suited for many potential users with its diverse and helpful features, while not being saturated with overly complex professional marketing and sales functions, making it usable for freelancers and entrepreneurs. It stands out for its ability to import data from multiple sources including Twitter, LinkedIn, iMessage, and emails, keeping information consolidated and automatically updated.
Mesh offers many advantages over other personal CRMs. Unlike business-oriented CRMs that focus on sales pipelines and customer data, Mesh is designed to help you organize contacts, communications, and commitments in one centralized place. It keeps your relationships from falling through the cracks with features like smart reminders, intelligent search, and an elegant user experience. Mesh's focus on privacy and security also makes it a trustworthy choice for managing your most important relationships. Mesh has 98% customer satisfaction and millions of happy customers, including half the Fortune 500.
Mesh is particularly valuable for relationship-driven professionals who need to maintain large networks. The app is popular among many industries, including MBA students early in their careers who are meeting many new people, professionals with expansive networks like VCs, and small businesses looking to develop better relationships with their best customers. Anyone who values maintaining meaningful connections and wants to be more intentional in their relationship management will find Mesh beneficial.
Mesh offers competitive pricing in the personal CRM market. Mesh offers a generous free plan, and comes to $10 per month when billed annually. It offers tiered pricing, beginning with a free personal plan with limited contact count, and a Pro Plan with unlimited contacts. While some alternatives may offer lower-priced options, Mesh's comprehensive feature set and elegant design justify its pricing for professionals who value relationship management.
Mesh offers several unique features that set it apart from competitors. Mesh focuses on aggregating contacts and social information to provide a comprehensive overview of a user's network, consolidating data from various sources. Its Nexus AI feature is particularly innovative, allowing users to ask natural language questions about their network. Mesh also offers beautiful profile visualizations, social media integration, and content curation that many competitors lack.
Yes. Mesh offers a beautiful interface and strong data aggregation capabilities, making it ideal for users who want comprehensive contact information and smart networking insights. Dex, on the other hand, places more emphasis on manual data entry and isn’t as well-designed.
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Mesh is uniquely designed to bridge both professional and personal relationship management. Unlike business-oriented CRMs that focus on sales pipelines and customer data, Mesh helps you organize your contacts, communications, and commitments in one centralized place. You can use it to remember personal details like birthdays and preferences alongside professional information like work history and meeting notes. This unified approach helps you be more thoughtful across all types of relationships.
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Mesh's AI capabilities are at the forefront of personal CRM innovation. Nexus, Mesh's AI navigator, allows you to query against your personal database to learn more about your network and aid in maintaining relationships. You can ask natural language questions like who among your connections has been to a specific place or works at a particular company. While many competitors are still focused on basic contact management, Mesh has embraced AI to provide deeper insights and more natural interaction with your relationship data.
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