Sara Willis Email & Phone Number

Tucson, Arizona Area

In my role as a consultant at The University of Arizona's high performance computing center, I offer assistance with system use, code optimization, debugging, software installations, and file transfers. I actively curate and update public-facing system documentation and create training videos available through our YouTube channel. Additional responsibilities include creating and maintaining system software to improve the usability of HPC systems that use the Slurm scheduling system.

Tucson, Arizona

Performed scientific research focused on long term trends in protein evolution. Operated in a technical role developing scripts to process, store, visualize, and analyze large quantities of genomic data utilizing a remote Linux cluster. Curated all genomic project data, developed complex bioinformatics pipelines to download and annotate all protein-coding sequences from over 400 species via online FTP repositories. Maintained and managed the MySQL databases using specialized scripts. Created and managed the GitHub repository: https://github.com/MaselLab/ProteinEvolution. Managed script and data submissions from a five-person team while enforcing best-practice guidelines. Supervised an undergraduate student, answered broad as well as technical questions, and assisted in debugging code. Second author on resulting manuscript published January 8, 2021 in eLife.

Tucson, Arizona Area

Conducted bioinformatics research studying overlapping viral genes. Developed pipelines, created and utilized MySQL databases, and performed descriptive and inferential statistics using linear mixed models as well as other approaches. First author on the resulting manuscript published on September 1, 2018 in Genetics as a highlighted article.