Please explore my page to learn more about the different collaborations and projects that inspire me. Feel free to visit my page too.
Author: Ivan Fernando Gonzalez lives in Richland, Eastern Washington. Recently, he traded an academic life that included walking on top of molten rocks, training sharks, and dealing with keyboards covered with capsaicin (the pungent substance of chili peppers) for the more adventurous life of an independent writer.
He writes in English and Spanish for local and international audiences, and he also spends some time trying to build communities on Twitter. You can find him at (English) and (Spanish).
He is co-founder of a regional effort bringing more and better science content for Spanish-speaking audiences, and he is a founding member of , a group of writers that brings storytelling in Spanish to the Pacific Northwest.
Ivan Fernando also likes to take pictures with his cell phone and takes care of a preschooler that is always two steps ahead of him. You can find his writings, community projects, and pictures at his and .
He has published in Scientific American Blog Networks, Latin American Science Blog, and Minority Postdoc Blog.
Member of the , , and .
Alumnus , , ,
Scientific expertise: Ivan Fernando Gonzalez got a BS in Physics from (Colombia) working on both experimental and theoretical . He volunteered for four years at the Atmospheric-Muons Telescope, and with his dissertation on a .
After graduation, he started doing electrophysiology with during a short stay in Venezuela, measuring the effects of toxins from scorpion and venomous fish on the electric function of nerves and muscles.
Later he moved to California to become an expert on the electric sense of sharks and rays with , and got his PhD in Oceanography from at UCSD. As a graduate student in oceanography–while training sharks and studying the ampullae of Lorenzini– he also had the chance to learn about our changing ocean and our warming planet.
As a postdoc with at , he learned how to measure the electric currents of neurons and cultured cells, while simultaneously recording movies of fluorescent molecules inside the cell. He spent three years at Gordon’s lab doing basic-research experiments that wanted to unveil the early stages of chronic pain by using pharmacology, electrophysiology, , and .
Member of . Former member of the , , , and Sociedad Colombiana de Biofísica.
Click to download a copy of a final draft from my dissertation: "The Electric Sense of the Thornback Ray, Platyrhinoidis triseriata: Linear Dynamic Range in Single-Unit Electrophysiological Recordings in vivo from the Afferent Nerve Fibers of the Ampullae of Lorenzini."
“Wonderful as are the laws and phenomena of electricity when made evident to us in inorganic or dead matter, their interest can bear scarcely any comparison with that which attaches to the same force when connected with the nervous system an with life (…)”
Michael Faraday 1838