Bio:

Upaasana is a Bioinformatics Analyst II at the Allen Institute for Immunology, where they apply their computational biology expertise to advance genomics research to support scientific innovation in human immunology. In their current role, they develop and maintain bioinformatics pipelines for analyzing complex single-cell and multimodal datasets, including scRNA-seq, ATAC-seq, CITE-seq, fixed RNA-seq and spatial transcriptomics. Their work includes performing large-scale quality control on next-generation sequencing (NGS) data and leading data submission efforts for scientific publications.

A focus of their recent work has been the investigation of immune resolution in COVID-19. By integrating longitudinal RNA, ATAC, and proteomic datasets, they characterized molecular trends in post-acute sequelae of SARS-CoV-2 infection (PASC). They are also engaged in initiatives to streamline and standardize quality control and data analysis by leveraging state-of-the-art computational tools, with the goal of making complex analyses more accessible and user-friendly.

Prior to joining the Allen Institute, Upaasana was a graduate researcher at the Bhasin Systems Biomedicine Lab at the Emory School of Medicine, where they specialized in the computational analysis of hematological and solid cancers, including AML, T-ALL, PDAC, and breast cancer. Their research contributions included statistical gene expression analysis, biomarker discovery, cell trajectory inference, and pathway analysis to better understand the tumor microenvironment and drivers of disease progression.

Upaasana holds a Master’s degree in Bioinformatics from Georgia Institute of Technology.