Bio

I am a Professor in the Department of Molecular Biomedical Sciences, and a member of NC State Bioinformatics Research Center. I received my PhD in Computational Biology and Bioinformatics from the University of Tennessee – Oak Ridge National Laboratory Graduate School of Genome Science and Technology, under Computer Science Professor Dr. Michael Langston. I started as a Bioinformatics Manager at Seattle BioMed (now Center for Global Infectious Disease Research) after graduation. In 2008 I joined the University of Washington Department of Microbiology as a Computational Research Scientist, and was promoted to a Research Assistant Professor in 2012. I moved here at NC State in July 2016 as one of the Dean’s Faculty Excellence cluster hires, in the field of “Translational Genomics of Infectious Diseases,” and to be part of the Bioinformatics Research Center.

Publications

• Development of genomic resources and assays for immune repertoire profiling in Syrian hamsters , The Journal of Immunology (2026)
• Selective impact on regulatory T cells with sustained functional phenotypes by the interleukin-2 mutein VIS171 in a nonhuman primate model , American Journal of Transplantation (2026)
• VILMIR is a trans -acting long noncoding RNA that enhances the host interferon response in human epithelial cells , bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) (2025)
• VILMIR is a trans -acting long noncoding RNA that enhances the host interferon response in human epithelial cells , Journal of Virology (2025)
• Cervicovaginal microbial features predict Chlamydia trachomatis spread to the upper genital tract of infected women , Infection and Immunity (2025)
• Development of ferret immune repertoire reference resources and single-cell-based high-throughput profiling assays , Journal of Virology (2025)
• Development of ferret immune repertoire reference resources and single-cell-based high-throughput profiling assays , bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) (2025)
• Diagnostic-avoiding Chlamydia trachomatis variants detected in cervical and endometrial specimens from women during 16S microbiome profiling , BMC Infectious Diseases (2025)
• Exploratory Analysis of the Regulation of Long Non-Coding RNA Transcription with Nucleotide Large Language Models , (2025)
• Human long noncoding RNA VILMIR is induced by major respiratory viral infections and modulates the host interferon response , Journal of Virology (2025)