Curriculum Vitae

Independent Bioinformatics Consultant

Performed genetic analyses for drug target validation using large-scale biobank data to evaluate the relationship between genomic variation and disease outcomes.

• Conducted subject-level genetic analyses within UK Biobank Research Analysis Platform (UKB-RAP) and All of Us Researcher Workbench to investigate the role of genomic variation in disease risk and progression
• Applied statistical and bioinformatics methods including variant annotation (VEP, LOFTEE), quality control filtering, and association testing to interpret findings and support hypothesis-driven study design

Postdoctoral Research Fellow

Led computational genetics research integrating multi-omics data from UK Biobank to elucidate disease mechanisms and identify potential therapeutic targets.

• Cardiomyopathy genetics: Identified carriers of pathogenic variants in cardiomyopathy causal genes using ClinVar, LOFTEE, and AlphaMissense prediction algorithms, then performed statistical association testing to evaluate common genetic modifiers of disease penetrance, onset, and severity in carriers versus non-carriers, delivering actionable insights for drug target development in a first-author publication
• Rare variant proteogenomics: Evaluated associations between rare genetic variants and protein expression using Olink data from UK Biobank Pharma Proteomics Project (PPP) to assess the utility of incorporating missense variant predictions into association analyses
• Integrated genetic and clinical data from ~500K exomes, EHRs, and self-reports, developing version-controlled analytical pipelines with Nextflow.
• Communicated complex genetic findings to multidisciplinary audiences including wet lab biologists and leadership

Graduate Student Researcher

Served as computational lead studying cell fate and reprogramming in Arabidopsis, developing novel methods for ChIP-seq quality control and analyzing multi-omics epigenetic data to elucidate mechanisms of developmental plasticity.

• Developed the Greenscreen method to identify and filter false-positive ChIP-seq peaks caused by technical artifacts, demonstrating efficacy across plant and animal model systems (Arabidopsis, Drosophila, Oryza sativa) in a first-author publication now used by 17+ research groups
• Designed and executed NGS data analysis pipelines (ChIP-seq, RNA-seq, MNase-seq) to characterize the activity and binding patterns of transcription factors and chromatin regulators driving cellular reprogramming in response to environmental signals, contributing to three second-author publications

Postbaccalaureate Research Fellow

Collaborated with computational biologists to analyze Hydractinia genomes, identifying novel small RNAs during head regeneration and performing domain architecture searches to characterize TRAF immune gene evolution across eukaryotes.

Summer Undergraduate Research Fellow

Conducted research in plant-pathogen genomics and genome assembly optimization.

• Investigated novel microRNA regulatory mechanisms in the parasitic nematode Rotylenchulus reniformis
• Evaluated and optimized genome assembly tools (AHA and PBJelly) for gap closure and scaffolding of Medicago truncatula PacBio long-read sequencing data
• Contributed to plant genome assembly improvements and developed early proficiency in bioinformatics pipeline development

Summer Undergraduate Research Fellow

Developed computational methods for viral sequence classification in plant pathogen detection.

• Improved siRNA sequence identification and classification algorithms for known and novel viruses in sweet potato plant samples
• Enhanced bioinformatics approaches for pathogen detection and characterization in agricultural systems

Undergraduate Research Fellow

Conducted molecular genetics research in crop improvement, focusing on genomic analysis and marker development for plant breeding programs.

• Compared Genotype by Sequencing (GBS) data across multiple restriction enzymes against Cucurbita pepo transcriptomes using BLAST analysis
• Developed and validated KASP (Kompetitive Allele Specific PCR) markers for agriculturally relevant genes in pepper breeding programs
• Performed molecular genetics techniques including DNA extraction, PCR amplification, and Sanger sequencing to investigate genotype-phenotype relationships and validate candidate gene mutations in pepper varieties