Group Members

Brielin C Brown

Brielin is an Assistant Professor in the Division of Informatics, Department of Biostatistics, Epidemiology and Informatics, with a secondary appointment in the Department of Genetics. Brielin is broadly interested in the development and application of statistical and computational methods in genetics and genomics with a focus on complex traits. Brielin conducted postdoctoral training at the New York Genome Center, jointly advised by Dr’s David Knowles and Tuuli Lappalainen. He received the PhD from the Department of Computer Science at the University of California, Berkeley in 2016, jointly supervised by Dr’s Lior Pachter and Noah Zaitlen. At Berkeley, he was the recipent of the Chancellor’s Fellowship for Graduate Study and the NSF GRFP. Prior to joining NYGC, he worked as a computational biologist at Verily Life Sciences. In a past life, he studied quantum complexity theory. In his spare time Brielin enjoys surfing, and collecting and mixing underground dance music.

• NHGRI K99/R00 Fellow, Data Science Institute Fellow -- New York Genome Center, Columbia University. Mentors David Knowles and Tuuli Lappalainen
• PhD -- Computer Science -- University of California Berkeley. Mentors Lior Pachter and Noah Zaitlen
• BA, BS -- Computer Science, Physics -- University of Virginia

Eleanor Zhang

Eleanor is a fellow of the Penn Center for Computational Biomedicine working with our group, Bogdan Pasaniuc and Mike Gandal. She is interested in developing statistical genetics methods to understand complex trait genetic mechanisms.

• PhD -- Biostatistics -- University of Southern California
• MS -- Biostatistics -- Columbia University
• BS -- Genetics and Genomics -- University of California Davis

Sumita Garai

Sumita is a postdoctoral fellow jointly mentored by Li Shen. She is interested in development and application of bioinformatic methods to neuroscience and immune disease.

• PhD -- Maethematics -- Penn State University
• MS -- Mathematics -- Indian Statistical Institute Kolkata

Seong Woo Han

Seong is a fourth year PhD student in the Computer Science department. He is interested in statistical machine learning and applications of causal inference in genomics.

• MA -- Statistics -- University of Pennsylvania
• BS -- Mathematics -- New York University

Daniel Vo

Daniel Vo is a second year Genomics and Computational Biology PhD student. He is interested in genomic analysis and methods development, particularly in the context of neuropsychiatric disease. He is co-mentoered by Mike Gandal.

• BS -- Computational and Systems Biology -- University of California Los Angeles

Sherry Xie

Sherry is a second year Genomics and Computational Biology PhD student. She is interested in population and statistical genetics.

• BA -- Cornell University

Derek Lamb

Derek is a first year Penn Biostatistics student interested in statistical genetics, longitudinal analysis and survival analysis.

• MA -- Biostatistics -- Columbia University
• BS -- Chemistry and Molecular Biology -- University of Pittsburgh

Nia Abdurezak

Winter 2025 rotation. Currently PhD student with Joe Romano.
Info: Nia is a first year Genomics and Computational Biology PhD student. She is interested in applications of Machine Leanring and AI in genomics, particularly within the context of immune health.