I'm a computational genomicist, interested in leveraging genome sequence information to understand the narrative of the human genome - what is it made of, how did it get there, and why is it still here. If one woman's trash is another's treasure, then I have had a rich career indeed, focusing on nuisance events, junk DNA, the alignment "bin" - the pariah of the genome.
Why, you ask? Well, I believe it's important to understand the impact of sequence changes of all sizes. These structural variations contribute to species evolution, population differences, and phenotypes including genetic disease. My research has touched upon evolutionary, population, and most recently, clinical applications of genomics.