Melissa is an assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering and the Department of Medicine at the University of California San Diego. Her major research interest is to understand complex genetic variants that underlie phenotypic changes, ultimately leading to human disease. When she's not in the lab, Melissa enjoys trail running, hiking, and hanging out with her family.
An is a graduate student in Computer Science at UCSD. He is interested in the applications of algorithms and machine learning methods into genomics. His current research work focuses on topics including: understanding complex genetic variants with the help of deep learning methods, and speeding up the genome assembly process by leveraging k-mer based algorithms.
Shubham is a PhD student in Computer Science. He is interested in development and application of statistical and probabilistic algorithms to problems in computational biology. Currently he is working on generation of reference panels for targeted STRs which will allow for accurate imputation of STRs onto existing SNP datasets.
Nima is a PhD student in Electrical and Computer Engineering. He is interested in algorithmic and statistical approaches in computational biology. His current focus is on genotyping STR expansions using short reads.
Ileena is a Bioinformatics PhD student at the University of California San Diego. Her overall research interests are to use and develop computational methods to understand human genetic variation contributing to complex traits. Her current research investigates the dissecting the influence of Short Tandem Repeats in neuropsychiatric diseases. When outside of the lab, she hopes to encourage other women to pursue research in the intersect of engineering and science.
Cynthia is a PhD student in Bioinformatics and Systems Biology at UCSD. She is interested in genome editing and computational genomics. Her current research studies the transcriptome-wide effects of various mutations in the same genes.
Sharona got her PhD in genetics from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and recently joined our lab as the lab manager. In addition, she will participate in a development of a novel method to chart genomic localization of protein complexes together with Dr. Alon Goren.
Neha is an undergraduate student at the University of California, San Diego studying bioinformatics. She is interested in the computational methods and approaches behind understanding the complex variations in genes that leads to genetic disorders. Her current research investigates the role of single nucleotide polymorphisms in diseases.
Michael is an undergraduate student at the University of California, San Diego pursuing a Bachelor of Science in Bioengineering: Bioinformatics. He is interested in applying machine learning methods to the study of genomics. He is currently working with PhD Student An Zheng on utilizing deep learning methods for understanding complex genetic variants.