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About the PI
Christina Boucher is an Associate Professor at the Department of Computer and Information Science and Engineering at the University of Florida. Her research is on development algorithms and data structures that allow for large scale biological sequence analysis. She incorporates the latest sequencing technologies and biological analyses to her work. Two major biological themes recur in her research: alignment to pan-genomes (usually human) and understanding how microbial species move and evolve.
She is currently a standing member of NIH BDMA study section.
Her research lab greatly appreciates the funding that we receive from NSF, NIH, and USDA.
recent News
current Service
- Standing Member of NIH BDMA
- RECOMB 2024 PC
- Member of HiTSeq Organizing Committee
- Member of RECOMB SEQ Steering Committee
- BMC Bioinformatics Associate Editor
- Bioinformatics and Biology Insights Associate Editor
- Track Chair for ISMB 2024
CURRENT funding
- USDA Subcontract: Development of Multiplex PCR Design Viral Sequencing Project ($300,000; PI: Boucher).
- NIH U01: Building Tools and Community to Make Pangenomes Accessible ($700,034; PI: Garrison).
- NIH R01: Triple-enriched metagenomics for robust resistome analysis” ($3,723,531; PI: Noyes).
- NIH R56: Fully Realizing Pangenomics Alignment ($644,578; PI: Boucher).
- NSF SCH: Enabling real-time surveillance of antimicrobial resistance ($1,187,778; PI: Boucher).
- NSF IIBR: An Efficient Pangenomics Graph Aligner ($700,361, PI: Boucher).
- NIH R01: Personal and panel references for improved alignment (PI: Langmead).
- NIH RO1: Developing Computational Methods for Surveillance of Antimicrobial Resistant Agents ($2,139,795; PI: Boucher).
PREVIOUS funding
- NSF EAGER: Solving the Bait Learning Problem ($180,995; PI: Boucher).
- NSF III: A scaleable and Efficient Optical Map Assembler ($397,461; PI: Boucher).
News
- Dr. Boucher and her collaborators received the cover of G3 for their publication entitled: “ONeSAMP 3.0: estimation of effective population size via single nucleotide polymorphism data from one population“
- Jonathan Bravo’s paper was accepted to Current Protocols.
- Dr. Boucher will be giving a Departmental Colloquim at CMU on November 1, 2024.
- Dr. Boucher and long-time collaborator Dr. Noyes will be collaborating on a 3.7 Million USD NIH R01 entitled “Triple-enriched metagenomics for robust resistome analysis“
- Dr. Boucher will be collaborating with Dr. Erik Garrison on a new NIH U01 entitled “Building Tools and Community to Make Pangenomes Accessible“.
Bahar Alipanahi at PhD Commencement
joining the lab
Multiple postdoctoral fellowships and graduate fellowships in big data analysis, applied algorithm and genomics are available in my lab at the University of Florida in Gainesville, FL. I am looking for students with a diverse background in mathematics and computer science. Candidates should be interested in biology but not necessarily have a formal background.
I am specifically interested in (a) pangenomics and devising and implementing algorithms for indexing a large number of reference genomics (Funded by NIH), (b) detecting antimicrobial resistance from shotgun metagenomics data (Funded by NIH), and (c) designing primers for multiplex PCR (Funded by USDA). My lab is balanced between applied and theoretical work: we not only create novel algorithms but we also implement them in a scalable manner.