Karen W
- Research Program Mentor
PhD at University of California San Francisco (UCSF)
Expertise
Human genetics, genomics, bioinformatics, DNA sequencing
Bio
I am a doctoral level bioinformatic scientist with a strong background in bioinformatics, clinical genomics, and a wide variety of next-generation sequencing platforms. I’m interested in developing new computational tools to analyze human DNA to better understand health and disease. This is a rapidly evolving field and much of what we have learned about the human genome in the past decade has directly shaped the healthcare industry around the world! Here’s a snippet of my graduate work: https://www.ashg.org/publications-news/press-releases/201910-reference-genome-resources/Project ideas
1. Introduction to next-generation sequencing (NGS) technologies:
We will dive into different sequencing technologies and learn how they revolutionize our understanding of the human genome. We will also analyze publicly available datasets to learn how real world scientists use sequencing to interrogate different parts of the human genome. For more advanced students, we can develop innovative computational methods to tackle some of the complex regions that are inaccessible by typical sequencing methods.
2. Precision Medicine:
As the cost of DNA sequencing plummets, it is now possible to implement high throughput sequencing in genomic medicine. In this project, we will analyze simulated patient sequencing data and do some detective work to find out his/her genetic diagnosis! We will design a computational pipeline and package off-the-shelf algorithms to identify genetic mutation(s) underlying different diseases.