I am a Biochemist with experience in developing novel enzymes and reagents for manipulating the DNA/RNA isolated from various sources (bacteria/plants/human).  Some of these applications include amplifying nucleic acids and creating libraries for high-throughput sequencing.  I have spent more than nineteen years in the life sciences and biotechnology industry in various roles across Research and Product Development, Manufacturing Operations, Quality Control and Business development.  Along the way, I published a number of papers in leading peer reviewed scientific journals and granted six US and international patents.

My recent interests are in the areas of biochemistry and genetics that intersect with programming and advances in CRISPR/Cas system has been a great inspiration.  In this workshop, I would like to share with students the excitement and teach how to use the CRISPR/Cas system to give a flavor of wet lab experience.  In addition, we will learn to code in Python programing language to identify a string pattern in the genome.   Being a self-taught programmer, I would like to share my learning experience with the students and hope to start a broader discussion on the clinical relevance of personal genomes and highlight the need to learn to code.