I’m an Assistant Professor in the Department of Genome Sciences at the University of Washington. I study cell differentiation, reprogramming and cell-cell communication. I also develop technologies to help identify genes that regulate these processes.

I received my bachelor’s degree and my PhD in Computer Science from the University of Maryland. As a graduate student, I was co-advised by Steven Salzberg, and Lior Pachter from the University of California, Berkeley, where I was a visiting student for several years. While working with Steven and Lior, I wrote TopHat and Cufflinks, and I helped Ben Langmead with Bowtie. I trained as postdoc in John Rinn’s lab at Harvard’s Department of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology, where I learned to work with stem cells. Near the end of my time at Harvard, I worked with Davide Cacchiarelli on Monocle.