We work in close collaboration with partners from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Emory School of Medicine to develop and apply novel computational approaches to public health challenges. This work includes the creation of software tools for molecular epidemiology and the computational analysis of microbial genome sequences. Our research also includes the search for genomic determinants of pathogenicity and antibiotic resistance.
We are studying the relationship between human ancestry and genomic determinants of health and fitness with an emphasis on admixed populations from Latin America. We are working with collaborators in Colombia, Panamá and Cuba to develop analytical platforms in support of clinical genomics. We are also particularly interested in the population dynamics of transposable elements and the extent to which their distributions have been shaped by selection.
We develop and apply algorithms for the analysis of next-generation sequence (NGS) data sets applied to functional genomics questions: DNA-seq, RNA-seq, ChIP-seq, MNase-seq, etc. These efforts have been applied to the study of adult stem cells used in regenerative medicine, as well as the search for biofertilizers, in collaboration with industry partners. We are also particularly interested in the role that transposable elements play in regulating the expression of the human genome.