Hello!

I am a Research Fellow at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in the Clinical Genetics Service, led by Dr. Kenneth Offit. My research develops computational methods to uncover the cellular and molecular mechanisms of human disease, with the ultimate goal of translating genetic discoveries into actionable opportunities for precision medicine. At Memorial Sloan Kettering, my research has been supported by an Andrew Sabin Family Foundation Fellowship in Cancer Prevention and a Tow Center for Developmental Oncology Career Development Award to translate advances and discoveries in genomics toward clinically-relevant applications.

As a School of Medicine Dean’s Postdoctoral Fellow at Stanford University in Dr. Stephen Montgomery’s lab, I analyzed the largest single-cell multi-omic dataset of fetal Down Syndrome hematopoiesis (with Dr. Ana Cvejic, University of Copenhagen). I discovered a potential mechanistic link between a reshaped chromatin landscape and clinical abnormalities (such as the 150-fold increased risk of childhood leukemia or increased red blood cell counts), which was published in Nature. In parallel, I applied deep learning sequence-to-function models to predict the cell-type-specific effects of non-coding variants (with Soumya Kundu & Dr. Anshul Kundaje), leading to the development of FLARE for prioritizing non-coding variants, which we published in Nature Genetics. I also participated in multiple NIH consortia, such as IGVF Consortium, dGTEx, and ENCODE.

Previously, I received my B.S. from Cornell University in Biometry & Statistics, with a minor in Biological Sciences and a concentration in Statistical Genomics. During undergraduate, I completed an Honor’s Thesis in population genetics as a part of Philipp Messer’s group and was a statistical genetics intern at the Regeneron Genetics Center for two summers in Tarrytown, NY. After graduating, I pursued a PhD in the Tri-Institutional Computational Biology & Medicine program, where I developed a foundation in statistical genetics within the labs of Olivier Elemento and Andy Clark at Cornell’s NYC and Ithaca campuses, focused on the interplay between genetics and environment.

Long-term, my interests are on elucidating the functional and clinical significance of genetic variation across scales: from the billions of non-coding variants identified by whole genome sequencing to the chromosomal alterations that characterize cancer genomes. To do this, my research is at the intersection of statistical and population genetics, machine learning for functional genomics, developmental single-cell multi-omics, cancer biology, and experimental perturbation. By building predictive and experimentally validated models of gene regulation, my research aims to translate genomic discovery into: (1) therapeutic target discovery, by discovering new genetic associations and their underlying mechanisms; (2) precision medicine, by personalizing treatment regimens based on molecular alterations, and (3) interventive and preventive care, by identifying high-risk individuals for screening & other preventive strategies. I believe we need better conceptual approaches for understanding the genotype-to-phenotype map; as a result, my current research spans both basic and more translational research areas.