I’m an aspiring neuroscientist, researcher, and builder, driven by curiosity about the brain. The projects on this site are where that curiosity becomes action: an app for stroke recovery, hardware for sensory overload, a YouTube channel translating real neuroscience research for younger learners. My goal is to make brain science more useful, accessible, and connected to real human needs.
I couldn’t help wondering not just what happens, but why the body and mind bother. Why does a neuron fire at all? Why does a brain, damaged and disoriented, sometimes find its way back?
Chemistry gave me a molecular language: electrons shifting, bonds breaking, energy moving through a system looking for equilibrium. Biology showed me how living systems are built from that same restlessness. Physics gave me the forces underneath both. Every thread I pulled kept pointing me back to the same place. The brain.
Last summer the question stopped being abstract. At Stanford’s CNI-X I worked on A.R.A.I.A., an app for people with aphasia, the condition where a stroke takes away your ability to speak or understand language, but your mind is still all there. You’re still in there. The words are gone. We built the therapy around Melodic Intonation Therapy: singing the words you can no longer say, because the right side of the brain often still has the music.
What I keep coming back to is this: the brain’s failing and its coming back are the same plasticity, just running in different directions. I want to study both.
An app for people who’ve had a stroke and can’t find their words anymore, but who are still completely there. We built the therapy around singing: when language won’t come, the music sometimes still does. Two weeks at Stanford CNI-X 2025, a six-person team, my capstone.
Open the project →A headband I’m designing to read brainwaves and give a calming nudge before sensory overload tips into crisis.
My YouTube channel. I take real neuroscience research and turn it into videos for four different age groups. Nothing made up.
Hosted by Stanford Medicine. Keynote on brain-computer interfaces. Attended virtually.
The books and papers I’m reading on my own. Some I’m working through, some I keep going back to.
Why brains differ: the science, what it actually feels like, and groups doing real work for the community.
The numbers, daily protocols with evidence behind them, and who to call if you need someone right now. Focused on younger readers since most popular adult literature doesn’t reach them.
Florida Virtual School (FLVS Flex) · honors track
Six classes finished with perfect grades, six more in progress, all honors except French (honors track only begins at French 3). FLVS lets me move faster on the diploma track and build the rest of my schedule around neuroscience.
MCB80 series · Prof. David Cox, Harvard
A university-level course on the brain that I worked through alongside high school. It starts with how a single neuron uses electricity to fire, and ends with how whole networks build perception and memory.
Stanford Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences · youngest in cohort, rising freshman
Two weeks at Stanford, working with med-school faculty on clinical neuroscience, neuropsychiatry, research methods, and design thinking. We presented our capstone (A.R.A.I.A.) to the faculty, staff, and our families at the end.
HTML & CSS · Python · Device Configuration & Management
Real-world credentials I picked up while doing schoolwork. They’re what let me actually build the prototypes for projects like A.R.A.I.A. and NeuroCalm instead of just sketching them.
I’m always glad to hear from researchers, teachers, students, or anyone working on neuroscience or assistive tech. If something on this site interests you, please write.
oztekinperi@icloud.com