Christopher Saunders Email and Phone Number

Created new Clinical Methods Research team as part of Illumina's Advanced Sciences organization. The team leveraged current and future Illumina assays for the improvement of human health by developing new analysis insights as well as statistical models and algorithms for prototype methods applied to these assays.Prior to this, I led development of DRAGEN-SV, the DRAGEN platform structural variant caller. My team and I were also involved in other aspects of DRAGEN development including bulk and single-cell RNA workflows, targeted variant callers such as CYP2D6 and several architectural concerns cutting across multiple workflows. In this role I led the integration of my team into the DRAGEN ecosystem following Illumina's acquisition of Edico Genomics, including building our open-source SV-caller, Manta, into a robust and integrated part of the DRAGEN platform while continuing to greatly improve the accuracy and speed, and disseminating statistical modeling ideas introduced in Strelka2 and other tools into the DRAGEN platform.Prior to leading DRAGEN-SV I have been involved in many projects at Illumina, including primary analysis for sequencing, secondary analysis methods development for research and diagnostic products, and workflow design for on-instrument/cloud. Some of the more externally visible project examples are the Strelka2 germline and somatic small variant caller (https://github.com/Illumina/strelka), the Manta structural variant and indel caller (https://github.com/Illumina/manta), creating, with Elliott Margulies, the Genome VCF (gVCF) conventions to improve support for clinical sequencing (https://sites.google.com/site/gvcftools), and various custom calling models used in the MiSeqDx Cystic Fibrosis assay (http://www.illumina.com/clinical/diagnostics/cystic_fibrosis.html).