About

I’m a PhD candidate in the Department of Medical Informatics and Clinical Epidemiology at Oregon Health & Science University in Portland, Oregon. My research centers on quantum machine learning algorithms and their potential applications in biological and medical research (with an eye towards clinical translation). You can check out some selected research papers here.

Before pursuing my doctorate, I received my MS in bioinformatics and computational biology from OHSU in 2017. My thesis focused on computational modeling of platform error for next generation sequencers. The aim of this work was to explore the integration of error correction algorithms into a gold standard genomic sequencing pipeline to improve its sensitivity and specificity for 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 coming to OHSU, 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 projects, including ones related to my research) on my GitHub.

I also received a BA from Whittier College with a major concentrating in Neuropyschology and a minor in American Political Science.

Outside of work, I spend a lot of time climbing, hiking, foraging, inventing recipes, brewing hooch, growing bonsais, coding generative art algorithms (hence the image on the left side of 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.

©2021 Benjamin Cordier