David Racine, PhD.

Research

Ever since doing the switch from aerospace to fundamental science, my interest has been the study of light-matter interactions in the living system. I shaped/chose all three PhD projects listed below to acquire the research skills to pursue that interest:

• molecular biology
• advanced optics
• theoretical physics

The article listed below gives some idea of my interest although it is at whole system level rather than at the cellular, subcellular level, where I work.

• D. Racine, A. Rastogi, R.P. Bajpai, Hints at Quantum Characteritics of Light Signals Measured from a Human Subject, Chinese Med., vol. 4, no. 3, Sep. 2013.

Over the last year, I have been working under an A*STAR grant in Singapore where I discovered quantum coherence effects in the rod photoreceptor cell. This was achieved by building and optimizing an optics and electrophysiological setup, and developing a software to precisely control and monitor all aspects of the experiment. By combining experimental observations with quantities derived from two theoretical models of phototransduction, I was able to hypothesise and verify the occurrence of quantum effects in the lab.

Biography

Engineering, Aerospace

• BSc Electrical Engineering, University of Sherbrooke, 1995-1999

• Radio Frequency (RF) Engineer, Canadian Space Agency, Montreal, 2000
• Space System Engineer, MDA, Vancouver, 2001-2004

I worked on multiple space missions, Radarsat I, Radarsat II, Cascade/CASSIOPE, Rapideye; mostly as RF and Comm. Systems Engineer, but also performing orbit coverage analysis and writing requirements for spacecraft launch and space environment compatibility.

Life Science or Physics

• Doctoral Studies in Neuroscience, Bochum, Germany, 2005-2007
-Recipient of a research scholarship, IGSN.
-Eye tracker cognitive experiments.
-Recombinant gene technology, protein over-expression and labelling.
-FTIR spectroscopy, protein NMR.

• D. Racine, M. Hausmann, O. Güntürkün, Dichotic Vision, Output Driven Asymmetry Perception, Poster 857.9, Society for Neuroscience Annual Meeting, Washington, USA, Nov. 2005.


• ZL. Ma-Högemeier, C. Körber, M. Werner, D. Racine, E. Muth-Köhne, D. Tapken, M. Hollmann, J. of Neurochem., vol. 113, pp. 1403-15, Jun. 2010.

• Doctoral Studies in Neurobiology, Quebec, 2007-2009
-Recipient of a NSERC scholarship.
-Established organotypic slice culture, viral vector gene transfer.
-Developed advanced two-photon and fluorescence microscopy systems.

• Doctoral Studies in Condensed Matter Theoretical Physics, Dublin, 2010-2013
-I built a new theory based on density matrices to describe Multiple Exciton-Polariton
 Bose Einstein Condensates (BEC) and predict new effects.
• D. Racine, P.R. Eastham, Quantum Theory of Multimode Polariton Condensation. arXiv:1310.3641, Phys. Rev. B 90, 085308 (2014).
-PhD obtained in January 2014 (thesis here).

Life Science and Physics

• Postdoctoral Scientist in A*STAR, Singapore, 2015-2016
-Built and optimised an optics and electrophysiolocal setup.
-Developed an experiment control and monitoring software in Python.
-Established all the current theoretical models for rod phototransduction.
-Hypothesised and verified the first occurrence of a non-trivial quantum
 effect at the subcellular level.

Other Points

• I like to fly.
• I speak French, English, Spanish, German, Chinese.