Each year, the Georgia Tech Bioinformatics Graduate Program recognizes outstanding students who have demonstrated exemplary leadership in bioinformatics and computational biology, while integrating research and education on the use of information technologies in biology and medicine. Faculty members nominated students and an interdisciplinary committee of faculty members selected the winners. Please join us in congratulating the following two outstanding students!
Shivam Sharma is the award winner of the 2024 Mark Borodovsky Prize for Excellence in Bioinformatics, Outstanding PhD Student. Anagha M. Krishna is the 2024 J. Leland Jackson Fellowship winner, for Outstanding MS Bioinformatics Student.
More about Shivam Sharma:
Professor King Jordan, Shivam Sharma’s research advisor, says, “Shivam is a truly exceptional PhD student who has made major contributions to the research, teaching, and service efforts of my lab. I can’t imagine a more deserving applicant for the prestigious Borodovsky Prize.”
Shivam has been an extremely productive researcher in Jordan’s research group. To this point, Shivam has published ten manuscripts, with two as first author, and he was the key contributor on their work with the NIH All of Us Research Program, which was published in Nature this year [Nature (2024) 627: 340–346]. He also led their work on genetic ancestry inference of the All of Us cohort, working together with the consortium, which is currently under revision at Nature Communications. This work was recognized with the Reviewer’s Choice award when he presented it at the American Society of Human Genetics annual conference.
Additionally, Shivam helped Professor Jordan to completely redesign the course content for the Genomics and Applied Bioinformatics course taken by MS BINF students. In particular, he helped Jordan create a computer lab using the Georgia Tech PACE ICE (Instructional Cluster Environment) for education using Jupyter Notebook, an emerging data science platform. This resource was new in fall 2023, and Shivam worked with PACE support to develop an innovative platform for code demonstrations and student projects. This allowed students to gain practical experience in the computational genomics domain that the course covered, while also getting experience in high performance and cloud computing. These latter areas, in particular, had been identified by past students as gaps in our curriculum. With Shivam’s support, Bioinformatics was able to close those gaps and keep providing our students with the kind of state-of-the-art instruction that they deserve. Shivam TAing that course again this fall semester and developing a succession plan so that his methods can be passed on to the next generation of TAs after he graduates.
More about Anagha Mohana Krishna:
Anagha came to the MS Bioinformatics program as a computer scientist with four years of industry experience in cloud computing. Prior to her start at Georgia Tech, she contacted Professor Nick Housley, expressing interest in his study that is defining molecular pathologies in the nervous system caused by cancer and its treatment through the integration of cell biophysics and single-nuclei and spatial sequencing. Anagha then directed her efforts toward a study related to ovarian cancer. During her time in Housley’s research group, she built new domain specific knowledge and began mastering a suite of advanced analytic skills as she took on a cutting-edge project that will benefit investigators of gynecologic malignancies, patients, and providers. Professor Housley says, “She is an outstanding young investigator, one of the most adventuresome, curious, and able of my advisory career.”
In addition to her research, Anagha has maintained a 4.0 GPA, served as a Graduate Teaching Assistant for BIOL 7200 (Programming in Bioinformatics core class), and completed an internship as a Bioinformatics Software Engineer in the Individualized Neoantigen Therapy team at Moderna. While serving as a GTA, Anagha not only graded and provided feedback on student work, but she took the initiative to create a weekly “Further Readings” document, a resource for delving into topics beyond the course syllabus and providing real-world applications in Bioinformatics. In her internship, Anagha received received three awards from managers and cross-team members for being Relentless and Collaborative, two core values of Moderna.
The Jackson Fellowship also funds Bioinformatics “Best Paper” awards:
Varsha Bhat (advised by Greg Gibson) won Best Paper for a PhD Student. Varsha’s winning paper is, “Impact of Hydroxycarbamide Treatment on the Whole Blood Transcriptome of Patients with Sickle Cell Disease,” Published in the British Journal of Haematology.
Anirudh Jaishankar and Asma Khimani (both advised by May Wang), wrote the Co-Best Papers for MS Students. Anirudh’s winning paper is, "Identifying Features for Keloid Scars Subtyping Using K-Modes Clustering," while Asma’s winning paper is, "Predicting Cardiovascular Disease Risk in Tobacco Users Using Machine Learning Algorithms." Both papers were accepted and presented at the 46th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine & Biology Society
Lisa Redding, lisa.redding@biosci.gatech.edu
