My research interests include the investigation of DNA methylation alterations in tumors and the development of innovative technologies for liquid biopsies. In my previous postdoctoral fellowship, I helped develop multiple diagnostic assays that analyze tumor specific DNA methylation biomarkers and developed technologies to capture circulating tumor DNA in flowing unaltered plasma. I have also developed multiple bioinformatic tools to characterize DNA methylation alterations and to discover DNA methylation biomarkers from Illumina DNA methylation array data. My future goal is to continue combining bioinformatics analyses with molecular technology development to conduct both basic and translational cancer research.

Short Bio

I received my Ph.D. from Dr. San Ming Wang’s laboratory at the University of Nebraska Medical Center. As a Ph.D. student, I used next generation sequencing to identify germline mutations that associate with a change of risk of developing breast cancer in individuals with a history of familiar breast cancer. After graduating with my Ph.D., I joined Dr. Sukumar’s laboratory as a postdoctoral fellow at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. In Dr. Sukumar’s lab, I developed multiple tumor diagnostic assays and bioinformatic software to identify and investigate DNA methylation alterations in tumors.