I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Computational Medicine Program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and lead the CompCy Lab. My research is broadly focused on 1) single-cell bioinformatics 2) computational and systems immunology, and 3) developing algorithms for representing and understanding graph-based data (many of these concepts are very appropriate for studying single-cell data!). As a postdoc, I particularly focused on how to relate single-cell mass cytometry data to external variables of interest (such as clinical outcome). This is a challenging problem, given the heterogenity and diverse amount of information contained across the hundreds of millions of cells collected in an individual single-cell experiment.
I completed training as a postdoc in computational and systems immunology at Stanford with Nima Aghaeepour from 2018-2020. Prior to joining Stanford, I finished my PhD in 2018 with Peter Mucha, where my research focused on graph partitioning.
Image Credit to Amy Tsai
I am looking for students to work with me! If you are interested in single-cell bioinformatics, integrating multiple experimental modalities, analysis of graph-based data, systems immunology, and their intersection, please feel free to send me an email. Computational biology is a highly interdsciplinary field. Complementary perspectives and training backgrounds lead to exciting method developments and new questions. So, I am excited to welcome students from diverse backgrounds.
Email: natalies at cs.unc.edu