Ryan Eller, Ph.D.
Lecturer, Biology
Research
Research Areas
- Genetics/Genomics
- Computational Biology and Bioinformatics
- Artificial Intelligence
- Statistics
Research Description
DNA is arguably nature’s most powerful data storage media. A mere milligram of DNA can store the entire contents of every book in the Library of Congress and have room to spare. For context, the Library of Congress contains 40 million books, 74 million manuscripts, and contains the largest rare book collection in North America. In humans, we can study this storage media to gleam information about our ancestral histories, susceptibility to diseases, aspects of our personality, and other phenotypes that makes each one of us unique. Unfortunately, studying DNA isn’t trivial and often requires computers, software, and mathematical algorithms to read, analyze, and interpret the information contained within its base pairs. My research is focused primarily on utilizing increasingly powerful computational tools to extract and analyze genetic information from human DNA. Questions I’m currently studying range from the medical field to forensics to population genetics.
Students who have an interest in genetics, computational biology, bioinformatics, machine learning (a subset of artificial intelligence), and/or programming (e.g. Python, R, etc.) can email me about current research opportunities. Students should note that as I do not conduct any wet lab (i.e. benchtop) research all my work will be computational in nature.
Education
- Ph.D. Genetics, Purdue University (IUPUI), Indianapolis, IN
- B.S. Biology, Butler University, Indianapolis, IN