Vinay Varadan, PhD

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Dr. Vinay Varadan is an Assistant Professor in the Department of General Medical Sciences-Oncology within the School of Medicine at Case Western Research University. Dr. Varadan's research focuses on decoding disease mechanisms through the development and application of multi-scale models of primary tumor profiling data, coupled with functional assessments in preclinical model systems. Thus, his research interests span big data analytics, machine learning, computational biology and functional genomics.

Postdoctoral Researchers

Deepak Babu, PhD

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Dr. Deepak Babu works on novel mechanisms underlying the pathogenesis of Barrett’s Esophagus and Esophageal Cancer. He is also investigating the genetic mechanisms contributing to aggressive behavior and drug resistance of breast cancer. Deepak received his int. M.Sc./Ph.D. degree in biotechnology from the University of Hyderabad, India, 2019. His doctoral research work unveiled the Clinical and therapeutic significance of epithelial to mesenchymal transition (EMT) like process in glioma. His research interest includes the molecular and cellular understanding of cancer etiology by utilizing advance gene-editing techniques and appropriate cell culture and/or animal cancer models.

Sirvan Khalighi, PhD

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Dr. Sirvan Khalighi works on developing multi-scale models to infer the functional impact of cellular aberrations in cancer. He received M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in artificial intelligence and robotics from Sharif University of Technology, Iran, 2005 and University of Coimbra, Portugal, 2016, respectively. He was a researcher at the Institute for Systems and Robotics (ISR-UC) where he has been involved with projects in the area of automatic sleep staging and brain computer interfaces. His research interests include computational systems biology, biomedical signal processing, statistical pattern recognition, transfer learning, and domain adaptation with healthcare applications.  

K Ramachandra Murthy, PhD

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Dr. K Ramachandra Murthy is currently developing computational methods to model complex signaling networks in individual tumors with applications in drug repositioning and adaptive trial design. He received an M.Sc. in Mathematics from University of Hyderabad, India followed by M.Tech. and Ph.D. in Computer Science from Indian Statistical Institute (ISI), Kolkata, India. He was senior research fellow and research associate at the Machine Intelligence Unit, ISI. He also worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute for Development and Research in Banking Technology, Hyderabad, India, focusing on scalability issues of dimensionality reduction methodologies applied to big data analytics. His research interests include machine learning, pattern recognition, big data analytics, dimensionality reduction, convex optimization, computational systems biology and functional genomics. 

Graduate Students

Hannah Hill

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Hannah Hill is a Ph.D. candidate and research assistant in the Varadan Laboratory. Hannah earned a B.S. in Medicinal Chemistry from Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Worcester, MA in 2016. As such, she has a broad background in general, physical, organic, and inorganic chemistry. After accepting admission into the Molecular Therapeutics Training Program at CWRU, she has gained experience in cellular, molecular, structural, and systems biology and continues to expand her horizons in bioinformatics and cancer biology. Her thesis project investigates the molecular mechanisms underlying racial disparities in triple negative breast cancer. She leverages systems biology approaches in the form of computational analyses of multi-omics primary tumor profiles and genetic manipulations of in vitro cell culture models to identify differentially activated genetic and immunologic mechanisms.

Research Staff

Salendra Singh, MS

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Salendra Singh is the Lead Bioinformatics Analyst/Programmer in the Varadan Laboratory. His interests span next-generation sequencing analysis, pan-cancer analytics and large-scale molecular integration in addition to big data analytics platform development and visualization. 

Peronne Joseph

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Peronne Joseph is a Senior Research Assistant and Lab Manager in the Varadan Laboratory. Peronne holds a B.S. in Biology from the University of Arkansas-Fayetteville and has completed a diverse scope of graduate courses in biotechnology entrepreneurship, biology, public health and epidemiology and biostatistics at CWRU. Prior to joining the Varadan Lab in 2018, Peronne worked in both computational and wet-lab environments, focusing on the discovery of rare genetic variants in vision and speech/language disorders, as well as decoding the complex etiology of  cancer. As such, Peronne's interests span statistical methodologies as well as the establishment, maintenance and use of in vitro and in vivo  model systems to delineate disease mechanisms in complex diseases including cancer.
We are a growing collaborative team of engineers, biologists, programmers and scientists dedicated to solving some of the most complex problems in translational cancer research through the integration of innovative data science with deep biological knowledge. 
 
Our ongoing collaborations within the Cancer Center and beyond span the translational spectrum, from clinicians to engineers and molecular biologists, thus allowing us to traverse the journey from bedside-to-computer-to-bench and then back-to-bedside.
 
Alumni
1) Abolfazl Razi, PhD (Postdoctoral Fellow) - Currently Asst. Prof. @ Northern Arizona University, AZ 
2) Anna Keri (Young Scientist Foundation - Summer Intern) - Undergraduate program @ Washington University in St. Louis
3) Jaspreet Kaur (SYBB Graduate Student) - Currently at Foundation Medicine, Cambridge, MA