APC Lab Alum Spotlight: Daniel Guest

Current Employer: University of Rochester

Current Job Title: Postdoctoral fellow

Current website: guestdaniel.github.io

Favorite current project: I am collaborating with other APC lab alumni at Michigan to help them create “rate-place metamers” of pitch stimuli. I really enjoy that project because it keeps me in touch with awesome APC lab friends and because it’s a unique fusion of my past PhD work (pitch behavior) with my current postdoc work (computational modeling).

When were you in the APC Lab? 2017–2022

What position did you have during your time at the APC Lab? PhD student

What was your favorite project/paper from your time in the APC Lab? Probably my 2022 high-frequency pitch paper with Andrew. The behavioral experiments were grueling for both subject and experimenter, but well worth it in the end. Modeling the data in that paper was what led me down the rabbit hole of the computational work that I’ve since focused on in my postdoc. 

Favorite restaurant to grab a bite to eat in the Twin Cities/campus? K-bop in Dinkytown — tofu fried rice with extra gochujang fueled my whole PhD! 

Do you have any funny stories about your time in the lab to share? I think a lot of the funny stories from my APC time originate way or another at the ARO Hair Ball — the APC lab was always a big presence at the Hair Ball, especially on the dance floor! One year we created special dances to symbolize the important stimuli in the lab at that time — many folks around at that time can probably still do the AM and FM dances.

Favorite scientific conference to attend? Acoustical Society — I was on ASA Student Council for a while and made a lot of connections, it’s always great to catch up with the many ASA friends I’ve made over the years, and it’s fun to tune into sessions on less familiar acoustics research fields like architectural acoustics or animal bioacoustics. I also like that ASA is always in a new place — I’ve been to many different cities now in the US (and Canada!) thanks to the many ASA meetings I’ve gotten to go to.

Any words of advice for current students/researchers? My general advice is to always be open to new opportunities. The best projects and interactions during my PhD were not the ones I was planning from day one — they were the result of serendipity placing interesting opportunities in my path and then taking advantage of them, sometimes with little to go on other than “That sounds super cool, let’s do it!”.