Research scientist and bioinformatician

1 minute read

History

My story moves through an exciting time to be working in biology, having witnessed attitudes and change as we moved through advances in biology. The mystery of genes before and after the human genome project. Not long after, characterization of microRNAs led to Nobel prizes. The next-generation sequencing technologies brought us reliable studies of transcriptomes, and later genome-wide functional assays. Now AI-driven advancements offer a new era in the enterprise of scientific investigation. I have also touched on the endeavor of art throughout the years- running my own club and learning the life perspective of professional artists.

Background

Hello! My career in science (my life’s work?) started with a genuine curiousity about what comprises us. I left high school coming from a background in music, but couldn’t ignore my curiousity for the physical world and the human experience. After exploring archeology, anthropology, psychology and biology, I found my path to explore in the subjects of evolution, development, and genetics. Programming classes (and a brief foreé with a computer science minor) led me to bioinformatics and ultimately became my preferred workbench over the laboratory setting.

Still wide-eyed and naïve, I had dreams of a programming language of human thought 😯. Barring that, of course, the ciruitry of the cell and its state in time and space to the genome was its own fascinating, natural computer. I began my journey to understand the function and evolution of non-protein coding elements at Penn State.

Current Research

NGS and other Omics technologies allow us to understand the information state of the cell at an unprecedented depth and resolution. In this era, we can ask detailed questions about how traits are regulated at the systems level. See my recent contributions in the area of mosquito infection competency (Ogg, H.A., Mikol, Z.M., King, D.C. et al. Sci. Rep 2026) and transcription factor dynamics in the developing C. elegans intestine (Williams RTP, King D.C. et al. Genetics 2023).