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Akdes Serin-Harmanci, PhD

Assistant Professor

Akdes Serin-Harmanci, Ph.D. joined the UTHealth School of Biomedical Informatics (SBMI) on October 1, 2017 as an assistant professor. Before arriving at SBMI, Serin-Harmanci was an Associate Research Scientist at Yale University School of Medicine, Department of Neurosurgery.

Serin-Harmanci’s research focuses on developing integrative approaches on genomic, transcriptomic and epigenomic data to dissect the molecular landscape of cancer. The results of her previous studies have identified new molecular targets for precision therapies. She has an extensive experience in applications of next generation sequencing technologies in cancer research. Most recently, she studied the epigenetic and genetic mechanisms leading to atypical and malignant transformation of brain tumors.

“With the advent of high-throughput methods we can obtain limitless insight about epigenetics, transcriptomics, proteomics and genomics.” Serin-Harmanci said, “ However, accurately analyzing NGS data remains an open problem. More importantly integrative analysis is required to translate this heterogeneous and complex datasets into something useful. My primary research goal is to develop novel integrative methods to determine an individual’s unique molecular characteristics and use those genetic features to suggest targetable genes, drugs and treatments specific to each patient.”

Contact

 [email protected]
Phone: 713-500-3644
Fax: 713-500-3929

Staff Support

 Blanca Torres
Phone: 713-486-0114


Education

  • PhD, Computational Biology, 2011, Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics, Berlin, Germany
  • BS, Computer Science and Engineering, 2006, Sabanci University, Istanbul, Turkey

Areas of Expertise

  • Precision Medicine
  • Machine Learning
  • Genomics, Transcriptomics and Epigenomics