About

I’m a Senior Computational Biologist and software engineer at the Knight Cancer Institute at Oregon Health & Science University in Portland, Oregon.

I received a PhD in bioinformatics and computational biology from OHSU’s Department of Medical Informatics and Clinical Epidemiology (DMICE) in 2022, where I was an NLM/NIEHS Pre-doctoral Fellow. The primary focus of my dissertation was the development of quantum algorithms targeting biomedical research and healthcare applications and, in particular, the development of proof-of-principle quantum machine learning algorithms implementing quantum learning advantages in both sample complexity and generalization error – key figures of merit for learning systems.

My PhD work was a significant departure from the focus of my MSc, which centered on the computational modeling of platform error for genomic sequencing platforms. The aim of that work was to explore the integration of sequencing platform error correction algorithms into a gold standard genomic sequencing pipeline to improve its sensitivity and specificity for detecting low frequency variants, a class of mutations common in cancers. The ability to confidently detect low frequency variants is useful for monitoring minimal residual disease (MRD) – a crucial clinical endpoint in the treatment of a variety of cancers, including hematological malignancies.

Prior to my graduate education, I received a BA from Whittier College in 2011. There, I majored in Psychology with a concentration in Neuropyschology and a minor in American Political Science. My undergraduate thesis centered on the neurobiological and perceptual basis of emotions as experienced from and perceived within music.

Before pursuing a career in research, I worked at a creative agency in Newport Beach, California building interactive data visualizations, web games, dashboards, and the like. You can check out some of that work (and other random software projects, including ones related to my research) on my GitHub.

Outside of work, I spend a lot of time climbing, hiking, foraging, inventing recipes, brewing hooch, growing bonsais, coding generative art algorithms (hence the abstract image on this page), making music, and snapping photos of the gorgeous nature out here in the Pacific North West.

If you’d like to get in touch, I’m best reached via email.