Scott W Harden, DMD, PhD

I'm Scott W Harden, and this is my personal website. Although my formal education is in molecular biology, dentistry, and neuroscience, I am passionate about computer programming and electrical engineering. I use this website to share things I find interesting, with blog posts dating back to 2001 (when I was 15). I only update this page every few years, so the best way to see what I've been up to lately is to look me up on GitHub.

Contact

Education

Associate of Science (AS)
Biology
Bachelor of Science (BS)
Zoology major, Chemistry minor
Master of Science (MS)
Molecular Biology and Microbiology (biotechnology)
University of Central Florida
Doctor of Dental Medicine (DMD)
Dental School
University of Florida College of Dentistry
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Biomedical Science / Neuroscience concentration
University of Florida College of Medicine

Career

I work as a biological research scientist in a neuroscience laboratory. My recent work investigates the cellular neurophysiology of hormonal signaling in the brain using a combination of patch-clamp electrophysiology, optogenetics, and two-photon imaging.
I also do freelance hardware and software development operating as Harden Technologies, LLC
Although I am a dentist, I am not currently treating patients.

Software Development

As a scientist and a tinkerer I find great value in software which facilitates analyses of experimental data. This experience inclines me to work on software related to scientific data analysis and data visualization.

Technologies I work with: C#/.NET, Python, PHP/SQL, HTML/CSS, Linux, Azure

Notable projects:

ScottPlot - a .NET library for creating interactive plots of large datasets
pyABF - A Python interface for Axon Binary Format (ABF) electrophysiology files
FftSharp - a collection of fast Fourier transform (FFT) tools for .NET
Spectrogram - a .NET library for creating spectrograms

Hardware Development

I'm most interested in working on projects at the intersection of measurement and analysis, and also projects related to ultra narrowband data transmission (QRSS).

Technologies I work with: AVR microcontrollers, C (AVR-GCC), KiCAD, and LTSpice

Notable projects:

Amateur Radio

I am a licensed amateur radio operator (call sign AJ4VD, previously KJ4LDF). I own a Yaesu 857-D, and although I rarely operate, when I do I prefer using CW (Morse code) on 7 MHz. I enjoy building radio transmitters, receivers, and test equipment. A landmark blog post is from Jan 16, 2011 when I made my first Morse code contact with a radio transmitter I built from scratch. Although I have experience designing and building receivers as well, I have yet to build a radio frequency transceiver in a single enclosure (this is an ultimate goal of mine).

I am passionate about QRSS, an ultra-narrowband, low power, slow speed digital communication mode. The gist is that extremely simple circuits (often fewer than a dozen components) can generate a stable (5 Hz frequency shift keying at 10 MHz) low power signal (milliwatts of RF) to slowly send short messages (about 1 letter per minute) over extremely long distances (globally). These circuits are sometimes termed manned experimental propagation transmitters (MEPTs). To learn more, visit What is QRSS? and look over my blog posts tagged with QRSS.

I developed the following projects used by the amateur radio and QRSS community:

FSKview - A high resolution spectrogram for viewing FSK signals in real time Also worth noting is my ongoing real-time QRSS Plus project.
QRSS Plus - Automatically-Updating Active QRSS Grabber List

Medical Updates

I was diagnosed with cancer in 2012 and began treatment in 2018-2019. Treatments for my peripheral T-cell lymphoma have included chemotherapy, radiation treatment, and an autologous bone marrow transplant. My medical updates are chronicled on swharden.com/med.

If this website hasn't been updated in a while, you can verify that I'm doing well by seeing recent activity on GitHub.