About me
My research interest lie in the integration of various multi-omics datasets and approaches to study the biology of disease and improve clinical care.
Specifically, I am interested in:
- Developing methods for integrative multi-omics analysis and visualization.
- Utilizing these methods to study disease processes and develop personalized therapy, including biomarkers and targeted therapies.
Ideally, this research would be performed as part of an interdisciplinary team of experts, including experimental biologists, biostatisticians, and physicians.
Currently, I am a Bioinformatics Scientist at Arcus Biosciences, a biopharmaceutical company focused on developing immuno-oncology therapies. Here I lead bioinformatics functions in various projects to support drug development in multi-functional teams, from target discovery to translational research. On the backend, I also develop computational frameworks and infrastructure to support efficient bioinformatics work and effective communication to diverse teams in the company.
Previously, I was a post-doctoral fellow at Kennedy Krieger Institute and Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, working with Dr. Jonathan Pevsner. Here, my reseach focused on identifying the role of somatic mosaicism in behavioural and developmental disorders, with specific focus in bipolar disorder, through the use of next-generation sequencing (NGS) technologies.
I obtained my Ph.D. from the Cellular and Molecular Medicine program at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine under the supervision of Drs. Saraswati Sukumar, Christopher Umbricht, and Leslie Cope.
My dissertation focused on performing genomics studies from archival tissue samples in breast and thyroid cancer. I developed methods for RNA/DNA extraction from formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded (FFPE) tissue. In collaboration with Illumina, Affymetrix, and core facilities in several institutions, we performed microarray analysis and RNA-sequencing of these samples to (1) study the biology of disease, and (2) identify prognostic biomarkers. To maximize the amount of information from these samples, I developed the Epicopy R package that allows users to extract copy number variation information from raw methylation microarray data.
Prior to that, I had worked as a research associate with Dr. Michael Jensen at the City of Hope on chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy for cancer.