Hi, I’m Jamilla — I’m a Staff Bioinformatics Scientist at Karius, where I develop computational methods for infectious disease diagnostics.
Current work
At Karius, I’ve spent the past five years advancing culture-free approaches for antimicrobial resistance (AMR) detection and building bioinformatics pipelines for cfDNA and cfRNA sequencing to support liquid biopsy applications. I focus on scalable bioinformatics workflows in Python and Nextflow, using statistical modeling and Bayesian inference to turn high-dimensional sequencing data into clinically actionable insights. I’m especially interested in applying computational innovation to improve healthcare outcomes and equity.
Research background
I did my Ph.D. in Molecular and Cellular Biology at Harvard in the de Bivort lab, working on behavior, genetics, and evolutionary biology. My thesis combined custom Bayesian inference models (R and Stan) for behavioral individuality with next-generation sequencing and bioinformatics. I also taught genetics and evolutionary biology as a Teaching Fellow and served as Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Emerging Investigators. More on my research in my PhD page.
For fun
I'm a big Dungeons & Dragons fan and I still like to do a Lord of the Rings marathon once a year with my high school friends. Once or twice a year, I can be found traveling abroad with my family 🌍