I am currently interested in using bioinformatics and computational biology techniques to ask specific mechanistic biological questions, with an emphasis on next-generation sequencing (principally Illumina) technology to interrogate the genome. My current focus is on deciphering the rules of DNA sequence and chromatin architecture (e.g. nucleosomes, transcription factors, and replication proteins) that regulate replication and transcription across the genome. I've used a combination of chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP), micrococcal nuclease (MNase), DNase, and genomic replication timing assays to answer these questions, using a plethora of open-source bioinformatics tools (Bowtie and samtools especially) along with custom R, Java, and bash scripts adapted from many great bioinformatics papers (Fseq and MACS in particular).Although I began my Bioinformatics PhD in 2010, my research experience commenced with four years of experimental work in two genetics labs (two years at Cornell as an undergrad, and then two years at the NIH as a postbacc). While at the NIH, I was fortunate enough to be in a lab at the forefront of the next-generation sequencing revolution, revealing to me a new field that fit particularly well with my bioengineering background. In the future, I'd like to focus on translational bioinformatics and personalized genomic medicine.I greatly value teaching and mentoring, having been inspired by great professors and graduate student/postdoc mentors in my undergraduate, NIH, and graduate research experiences. To further these principles, I've assisted in the design of a 6-class, 2-week "Bioinformatics Introduction for the Non-Computational Biologist", which I helped teach in 2013, 2014, and 2015 (course table of contents: https://goo.gl/6KUWCb). Currently, my passion is in improving the career development resources for the Duke CBB program, collating the many great resources available at Duke and across the web.
Listed skills include Bioinformatics, Genomics, Molecular Biology, Genetics, and 10 others.
