Our mission

We are a multi-disciplinary computational team of computational biologists, bioinformaticians, computer scientists, and software engineers. Each member of the lab is trained to use these approaches to address research questions relating to disease biology and precision medicine. We collaborate with clinicians, researchers, and foundations in the US and worldwide to translate data into knowledge to drive the discovery, development, and delivery of omics-based precision medicine. As part of the UAB School of Medicine and Department of Genetics, we aspire to help patients, families, and those who take care of them by developing and applying groundbreaking tools and strategies for diagnosis and prognosis. We train individuals with a biology background who would like to develop computational skills. We also train individuals with a computer science background who would like to develop biological understanding so that they can study disease and improve patient outcomes. If you want to join our team, please reach out.

Center for Computational Genomics and Data Science Team Picture Summer 2023

What do we do? What is our science? How do we do it?

Word Cloud of the cumulation of skills within the center

Our center develops and applies a variety of computational biology and data science-based methods, tools, and algorithms to generate knowledge that can advance human health and disease research.

  • We develop:
    • Tools and methods for molecular diagnosis and prognosis
    • Strategies for the discovery of genotype-phenotype associations, including identification of clinically relevant modifiers
    • Commercial-grade tertiary analysis software and other tools to enable scientific discovery and data interpretation
  • To aid in:
    • Uncovering the cause of disease
    • Understanding differences in disease presentation
    • Identification of potential treatment and processes
  • By applying:
    • Computational biology approaches such as systems biology, multi-omics, comparative genomics, structural biology, biomodeling, ontologies
    • Machine learning methods, including data exploration, feature selection, modeling, explainable AI, interpretability, visualization
    • Software development expertise for design, architecture, algorithm development, usability

Who are we? How do we work?

  • We love doing science and engineering, and we feel lucky to be part of this team doing this work together.
  • We strive for excellence in all we do and look to be our own toughest critics
  • We are one team with many specialties, working collaboratively in pursuit of science, and we are open and transparent in our goals
  • We are willing to step up to new opportunities and tough challenges
  • We seek productive and constructive criticism from colleagues
  • We are accountable for our errors; the buck stops with us, individually and as a team.
  • We strive to be generous with our time and resources
  • We are willing to work hard to solve hard problems
  • We are a little intense at times and for sure a bit quirky, and we like it that way; it’s one of our strengths
  • We value the diversity of our team, which we think should mirror the diversity of the people our team serves
  • We care a lot about maintaining an inclusive culture
  • We do not take ourselves too seriously
  • We embrace the concept of ‘a rising tide lifts all boats’; accomplishments of any team member contribute to the overall good reputation of our team and helps us all