Personal statement

I am a PhD candidate in Bioinformatics at UC Santa Cruz. My research explores the use of extracellular non-coding RNAs and repetitive elements as predictive markers of early-stage cancer. Current published work includes the development of an RNA-sequencing analysis pipeline to enable streamlined quantification of repetitive element RNAs alongside canonical genes for more comprehensive whole transcriptome analyses, and the identification of previously unannotated, cancer-related RNA transcripts from patient plasma. My undergraduate research experience was the development of CRISPR vectors where I helped design and generate flourescently tagged SIX6 and SOX2 plasmids for monitoring retinal organoid growth. I also contributed to the downstream analysis of ATAC+RNA-seq data generated in said retinal organoids to identify candidate genes regulating formation of the retina. Later I performed imaging and analysis of rare cell populations and rare cell dynamics in the blood plasma of head and neck cancer patients, non-invasively looking for the release of circulating tumor cells for early detection. I have expertise in multi-omics (ATAC-seq, RNA-seq, DNA-seq) across multiple sequencing platforms, as well as extensive work in statistical analyses and machine learning.