Acknowledgements

We would like to express our deepest gratitude to our advisor, Dr. Dorian Houser at the National Marine Mammal Foundation, for his guidance, patience, and unwavering support throughout this project. Thanks to him, we have had the opportunity to grow as bioengineers. There were quite a few stumbles along the way, and we are very grateful that he has never been anything but encouraging and supportive. 

We are also grateful to Dr. James Finneran, Dr. Jason Mulsow, and Dr. Alyssa Taylor Amos for their various inputs on the project despite their busy schedules, which have helped us navigate a number of obstacles throughout this journey. Additionally, we greatly appreciate Emeritus Consultant Patrick W. Moore for his invaluable technical expertise in circuitry and his timely feedback, which have been extremely helpful in guiding our work. He took the time to answer our questions—some of which may have seemed amateurish—with patience and clarity. We are incredibly grateful to have had Patrick’s support. 

We also extend our gratitude to Dr. Gert Cauwenberghs and his graduate students, Min Suk Lee, Zhaoyi Liu (a.k.a. Louis), Shashank Bansal, and Jeonghoon Kim at the Integrated Systems Neuroengineering Lab, for taking time out of their own schedules to contribute to valuable discussions on circuit design, which have significantly influenced the development of this project. We deeply appreciate their generosity and support. Shoutout to Min, 

A special thanks to Sean Bauersfeld, our TA, for his understanding and support with class assignments, making this process much more manageable.