I am currently an Academic Program Officer in Prof. Trey Ideker?s lab at UC San Diego. My title reflects the varied roles I play in the Ideker Lab, both scientifically and administratively, as I also serve as the Assistant Director of the Cancer Cell Map Initiative (CCMI) and the San Diego Center for Systems Biology (SDCSB). I am involved in a wide range of research projects, both within the Ideker Lab and across the various Centers. Central though to many of these efforts is the role I play supervising a number of projects using the CRISPR/Cas9based approach to map genetic interactions in cancer cells. These functional maps can be used to identify protein complexes and pathways in cancer cells and to reveal genetic dependencies that might be therapeutically tractable. These studies will also provide us with the necessary training data to build ?visible? AIs, machine learning models that not only make accurate predictions but also provide mechanistic insights.
FUNCTIONAL CANCER CELL MAPS NARRATIVE Many cancers in adults are caused by mutations acquired over time. Research in both the Ideker Lab and the Cancer Cell Map Initiative seek to understand how these mutations alter the function of proteins leading to cancer using a variety of biochemical, genetic and computational approaches. We are particularly interested in understanding how combinations of mutated genes can disrupt normal cell physiology as knowing about these mechanisms can help us identify new drug targets or biomarkers.
