People

Current Members

Noam Auslander

Position: PI

Earned a B.S. in Computer Science and Biology from Tel Aviv University, a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Maryland with an NCI fellowship, completed postdoctoral training in Evolutionary Genomics Research at NCBI, and joined The Wistar Institute as an Assistant Professor in 2021.

🎓 Education

Ph.D. Computer science, University of Maryland, 2018
B.S.c. Computer science & Biology Tel Aviv University 2014

🔍 Interests

Computational Genomics
Machine Learning for Biology
Host–Microbe Interactions in Disease
Microbiome and Immunotherapy
Molecular Evolution
Skiing, running and new types of sports

📧 Contact

nauslander (at) wistar (dot) org

Andrew Patterson

Position: PhD Student

Program/Major: Genomics and Computational Biology

I am developing a method to quantify Human Endogenous Retrovirus expression, for use in cancer and immune disease prognosis and as a biomarker for treatment response.

🎓 Education

Masters, Interdisciplinary Data Science, Duke University 2021
M.S. Biology, California Institute of Technology, 2019
B.S. Genetics, B.S. Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, University of Georgia, 2014

🔍 Interests

Cancer/Immune System Interactions
Biomarkers for Cancer
ICI Therapy Response

📧 Contact

andrew.patterson@pennmedicine.upenn.edu

📄 Website

🎓 Scholar

Anastasia Lucas

Position: PhD Student

Program/Major: Genomics & Computational Biology

Current Projects:

Taxonomy-free fecal microbial predictors of immune checkpoint inhibitor benefit and adverse events in melanoma
kMermaid: Ultrafast metagenomic read assignment to protein clusters by hashing of amino-acid k-mer frequencies

🎓 Education

B.S. in Biostatistics - The Pennsylvania State University, 2015

🔍 Interests

Bioinformatics methods development
Disease risk & drug response prediction

📧 Contact

anastasia.lucas@pennmedicine.upenn.edu

🎓Scholar

🧑‍💻 GitHub

Julia Malnak

Position: Graduate Student

Program/Major: Genomics and Computational Biology

I’m studying the use of structure-based approaches for comparing and associating viruses with disease phenotypes. In my spare time, I’m probably cooking, playing with my cat Ember, reading Brandon Sanderson novels, and doomscrolling the NYT.

🎓 Education

BS- Computational Biology, University of Pittsburgh, 2023

🔍 Interests

Virus-Host Interactions
Viral Evolution
Protein Language Models

📧 Contact

🖥️ julia.malnak@pennmedicine.upenn.edu

🎓 Scholar

📄 Website

McKenna Reale

Position: Software Engineer

Program/Major: Computer Information Technology

I’m studying the microbiome-level mechanisms that underlie autism-spectrum disorder (ASD) using machine learning models. In my spare time, I love to knit, drink coffee, and go for walks around the city.