We are excited to have a special guest speaker for our next Genomics Institute in Sync Talk (GIST). Sidney Bell, computational biologist at Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, will be giving a talk “Genomic epidemiology as translational research: from basic science to applied public health practice” (abstract below). Join us live on August 1st, from 12pm to 1pm in B279 (Double Helix Room) or you can email rmiyatsu@ucsc.edu for a Zoom link.
UC Santa Cruz community: You can keep track of these and other GI events through our Google Calendar.
Genomic epidemiology as translational research: from basic science to applied public health practice
Sidney is a genomic epidemiologist, computational biologist and open-source tool developer. She did her PhD with Trevor Bedford at the Fred Hutch in Seattle, focused on phylodynamic modeling of viral cross-species transmission and immune escape. While in the Bedford lab, Sidney was an early contributor to Nextstrain, which sparked her interest in empowering other scientists to explore and find meaning in their data through open-source software tool development. This led her to join the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative as a computational biologist, where her work has included serving as the initial scientific lead for cellxgene, a data exploration platform for single-cell transcriptomic data; the program co-lead for covidtracker, which provided genomic epidemiology as a free end-to-end service to 17 county health departments across California; the founding product lead for CZ GEN EPI, a user-friendly workbench for genomic epidemiology bioinformatics for public health departments; and the creator of Galago, an exploration and automated reporting tool for public health users who are new to genomic epidemiology.