My name is David P. Hoffman. I’m a scientist/engineer who builds robust, high-performance optical systems and loves data and python

I’ve probed ultrafast chemical reactions, imaged nanoscale protein ultrastructure relationships, and implemented a high throughput screening platform. Now I’m applying optics 🔬 to omics 🧬.

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Experience

Oh, the places you’ll go!

 
 
 
 
 

Staff Optical Engineer

10x Genomics

April 2022 – Present Pleasanton, CA
More 🔬 + 🧬: Xenium
 
 
 
 
 

Senior Optical Engineer

10x Genomics

April 2020 – March 2022 Pleasanton, CA
🔬 + 🧬
 
 
 
 
 

Engineer IV

Eikon Therapeutics, Inc.

October 2019 – April 2020 Hayward, CA
I was developing the company’s core hardware technology platform, a high throughput single particle tracking (SPT) microscope 🔬. My focus was increasing throughput as efficiently as possible by engineering advanced illumination and analysis strategies. As a small startup I wore many other hats such as: developing our data analysis pipeline, introducing the use of Git and GitHub, helping set up company operations, and designing the company logo.
 
 
 
 
 

Postdoctoral Researcher/Research Scientist

HHMI, Janelia Research Campus

August 2014 – October 2019 Ashburn, VA
I developed an advanced pipeline to collect and correlate data taken from a ❄️ cryogenic ❄️ super resolution fluorescent microscope (which I designed and built) and a customized focused ion beam scanning electron microscope (FIB-SEM), to elucidate key questions in cell biology, research which was featured on the January 17th, 2020 cover of Science magazine.
 
 
 
 
 

Graduate Student Researcher

University of California, Berkeley

September 2008 – May 2014 Berkeley, CA
I spent my time in graduate school applying femtosecond stimulated Raman spectroscopy (FSRS) to multiple chemical systems. In particular, I developed 2D-FSRS which offers an unprecedented view of chemical reaction dynamics. During my tenure, I rebuilt many of the optical subsystems of the spectrometer, such as the Ti:Sapphire femtosecond oscillator and the non-colinear optical parametric amplifier (NOPA), vastly improving system performance. In addition, I rewrote the analysis software and rewrote the LabVIEW instrument control software. In total, the changes I made increased mean time to failure from ~2 hours to months.

Ramblings

lengthy, confused, and inconsequential

Seriously, don’t do it, it’s not helpful

Getting really good real resolution in SMLM is really hard.

How to make your images look bad with high NA objectives

The back pupil plane of a microscope objective is Fourier conjugate to it’s image plane. We use this fact to perform laser scanning microscopy or create the interference patterns necessary for SIM or LLSM.

My basic modus operandi has been to learn and then, if not immediately, soon after forget them. This is a list I maintain of things once a remember them.

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