Aug 22, 2025 - Congratulations to the newly minted Dr. Sean O’Connell and Dr. Kyle Thomas!
Big congratulations go out to Sean O'Connell and Kyle Thomas who successfully defended their dissertation projects on July 11th and August 15th, respectively. Both students receive their PhDs from the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University.
Sean first joined the Sober lab as a research specialist in 2017 and matriculated into the BME graduate program in 2019. His interests include development of new computational and experimental methods for advancing the field of motor control and he was co-mentored in his dissertation project by Sam Sober, Professor of Biology, and Chethan Pandarinath, Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering. He presented his dissertation work in a talk entitled "Methods for analysis of high-resolution muscle recordings during dynamic movement and generation of realistic motor unit datasets" in front of his friends, family and lab colleagues.
Kyle started in the Sober lab in 2020, after receiving a B.S. in Biomedical Engineering and Systems Engineering from Washington University at St. Louis. He is passionate about open science and innovative technologies to study motor systems. He was mentored in his dissertation project by Sam Sober and presented this work in a talk entitled "Motor unit control of mouse locomotion" also in front of his friends, family and lab colleagues.
Both Sean and Kyle will stay in their respective labs for a brief postdoctoral fellowship prior to moving on to new adventures.