In the spirit of archiving work in the lab notebook, this was my PhD dissertation proposal, a requirement to advance to candidacy submitted before our oral defense in the second or third year. Following some excellent advice, this is focused more narrowly than my actual dissertation. As a historical note, I started keeping an open lab notebook the month following this, on OpenWetWare (so work leading up to this isn’t archived, though admittedly first two years were largely coursework). I’ve back-dated the post to the date on the proposal.