Title: Exposing diverse molecular phenotypes from traditional RNA-sequencing

Speaker: Dr Joel Parker, Director of the Lineberger Bioinformatics Core and Research Associate Professor of Genetics at University North Carolina, US

Joel will present an array of computational techniques that explore the breadth of datamodalities available from RNA-sequencing. Topics will include RNA sequencing of clinical(FFPE) specimens; assessment of somatic mutations in breast cancer; reconstructing B-cellreceptors in melanoma; as well as sensitive detection and quantification of viral and retroviralRNA with applications in immuno-oncology.

Biosketch:

Joel Parker is Director of the Lineberger Bioinformatics Core and Research AssociateProfessor of Genetics at UNC. His research is focused on methodological development andintegrated analysis supporting high throughput research activities. Joel's work in this fieldbegan with a double major in biology and computer science from the University of Tennessee(1999), and then followed with a M.S. at Vanderbilt University (2002) where he was the firstgraduate of their biomedical informatics program. He worked for one year in the lab of ChuckPerou before moving into industry as a bioinformatics consultant with Constella Group. Uponacquisition of Constella by SRA, Joel left for Expression Analysis, a genomics services startup where he rose through the ranks of senior and principal scientist while developing theirRNA sequencing program. During this time, he received his PhD at UNC (2010), and was thefirst graduate of the Bioinformatics and Computational Biology program. Joel's PhD work andcontinuing work with Nanostring resulted in Prosigna, the first FDA approved IVDMIA withindications in breast cancer. Shortly after completing his PhD, he returned to UNC to lead theLineberger Bioinformatics Core. Under his leadership, the core has grown to 20 employees,including 8 PhDs in computational science, whose combined scientific output constitutes >300 manuscripts with an h-index > 100.

Hosted by: Dr Anita Grigoriadis, Cancer Bioinformatics

If you would like to meet Joel before or after the seminar, please contact Anita –anita.grigoriadis@kcl.ac.uk