Westley Dang

Westley is a process-oriented systems thinker, and loves tinkering with productivity tools and workflows. He knows every hotkey for every application and thinks ortholinear keyboards are the bomb dot com. Half way through his grad school career (in neuroscience), he realized that he was more concerned about the looming threat of climate change. Westley volunteered with the Surfrider Foundation San Diego as co-chair for the Rise Above Plastics committee and an Executive Committee member, where he focused on private and legislative efforts to reduce single-use plastic consumption in San Diego (he gives you permission to scold him incessantly if you ever see him eating with single-use plastics). When not in a pomodoro trance, he’s dreaming up crazy what-ifs and loves connecting really distant dots together.

IndieBio is not the first time Wes appeared on the entrepreneurship scene: he volunteered at a start-up accelerator in San Diego, advising start-ups alongside local business mentors in the area. He did his PhD in neuroscience in the lab of Mark Mayford at The Scripps Research Institute, where they used genetically-encoded markers to study neural ensembles thought to be the substrate for learning and memory. His project focused on the impact of aging on the ability to reactivate neurons during memory recall. He did his undergrad at the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, WA, majoring in biochemistry with a neuroscience emphasis. In his free time loves to cook, climb, surf, and hug trees.