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Biosketch:
Advances in sequencing technology have changed the landscape of research in Computationally Biology providing researchers with a flood of information about biological sequences. Our research focuses on statistical and algorithmic approaches to make sense of this data and provide biological insights. Some of the areas that we work on include:
1) Genome Assembly - Our ability to study various genomes is dependent on computational tools to reconstruct genomes from noisy experimental data. In recent years, new sequencing technologies have presented both a challenge and an opportunity for the design of new assembly tools and strategies. In our group we look at both de novo and comparative approaches for using sequencing and mapping information to reconstruct various Microbial and Eukaryotic genomes.
2) Pan-genomics - Analyzing and cataloguing genomic differences between individuals of a species (or strains of a microbial species or genus) is critical for understanding the genomic basis for various phenotypes. These differences can be subtle and can sometimes be in unexpected places (repeat elements, intronic regions etc.) and in our work we develop statistical approaches to identify such differences with high confidence.
3) Metagenomics is a new area of study geared towards understanding of microbial communities and their impact on diverse environments - from the human body to entire marine ecosystems. Our work is geared towards the design of novel tools to aid in the analysis of metagenomic datasets (both marker sequences as well as whole genome shotgun sequences). |
