A selection of my current work in research, global health, and software.
Neuroscience & Neuroethics Research
Selected for the Advanced Medical Neuroscience Internship, where I worked alongside researchers and faculty at Georgetown University on neuroscience and neuroethics.
My ethical investigation examined gut dysbiosis-driven inflammation and its potential role in the development of Parkinson's disease through the vagal pathway. I reviewed the literature on gut dysbiosis, alpha-synuclein misfolding, and Parkinson's pathology, then built a framework for conducting a holistic ethical review as that research advances. The analysis considered how inflammatory metabolites and LPS produced in the gut may contribute to alpha-synuclein misfolding in enteric neurons, and how human stem cell-derived Gut-Brain Vagal Pathway Assembloids could help establish that relationship, while weighing informed consent, participant privacy, demographic representation, and the ethics of increasingly complex neural organoids.
I presented the work to a panel including Dr. James Giordano, Chief of Georgetown University's Neuroethics Studies Program, and Dr. Rachel Wurzman, a Dana Foundation Fellow in Neuroscience and Society.
The internship also included fMRI work at Georgetown's Center for Functional and Molecular Imaging with Dr. Ashley VanMeter, transcranial direct current stimulation and neuromodulation in Dr. Adam Green's Laboratory for Relational Cognition, a hands-on brain dissection with Professor Tatyana Kliorina, and a session on movement disorders with Dr. Fernando Pagan.
Full Research Page
International Public Health Internship
I am a Public Health track intern in Leadership Initiatives' International Internship Program for the 2026–2027 cycle. The program pairs a student team with a development partner and a project coordinator in Bauchi State, Northern Nigeria, running from August through April with weekly team meetings and monthly calls with the coordinators in Nigeria.
My team (Team 26614) is partnered with the Jitar Community, a rural community of roughly 5,000 residents along the Bauchi–Gombe Road. We are learning directly from Jitar residents and our coordinator to understand the community's priorities, which residents identified as healthcare access, education, and physical infrastructure. From there the public health work moves from a baseline needs assessment toward a health education campaign and a grant proposal built around those priorities, with the team fundraising to support it.
Our first deliverable is a community profile of Jitar.
Jitar Community Profile
Better U LLC & BetterU — Co-Founder
Better U LLC is the company I co-founded with two others. We run product, engineering, operations, and the legal side ourselves, from early design through App Store release.
BetterU is the company's product: a social fitness and wellness app that puts training and mental wellness in one place, built with React Native and Expo on a Supabase backend. It covers guided workouts and training plans, wellness sessions with mood history and summaries, an AI trainer that coaches users in context, and a social layer with friends, groups, and a shared activity feed. I work mainly on late-stage development and release, including the TestFlight builds and the App Store submission. The app is now live on the App Store.
betteruai.com •
@betteruapp •
TestFlight beta
betterullc.com ‐ company site, coming soon
CogTrack — Cognitive Baseline Screener
CogTrack is a mobile app I am building that runs short daily cognitive tests, one to three minutes each, and charts how your own results trend over time. It is written in React Native and TypeScript on Expo, with Supabase and on-device storage.
Three tests are working so far. A reaction time task measures mean response speed and variability across ten trials. A Go/No-Go task measures inhibitory control across twenty trials through commission and omission errors. A three-minute SART task measures sustained attention by tracking whether reaction time variability rises in the second half of the task, which is the vigilance decrement. Results are stored locally, one session per day, and plotted on a trends chart.
Working memory and interference tests are the next ones to build, along with baseline normalization and data export.
CogTrack is a self-tracking tool for personal pattern awareness. It is not a diagnostic or clinical instrument.
Around the Web
Other sites I have built or been featured on.
BetterU ‐ the product site for BetterU, the social fitness and wellness app from Better U LLC, now on the App Store.
betteruai.com
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@betteruapp
Better U LLC ‐ the company site for Better U LLC, covering the team and our policies.
betterullc.com ‐ coming soon
Vote Daniel Johnson ‐ the campaign site I built for my run for House Council President at Strake Jesuit, under the slogan "Leading With Faith. A Voice For Every Crusader." It carried my platform, a Q&A page where students could ask me questions directly, and a feature that let supporters sign their name onto the page.
pickdaniel.com
Leadership Initiatives ‐ my research page from the Advanced Medical Neuroscience Internship.
li2026.org