I am a bioinformatics analyst in Yufeng Shen’s lab in Columbia University’s Department of Biomedical Informatics, as well as in Wendy Chung’s lab in Columbia University Medical Center’s Department of Pediatrics. I am planning to pursue a M.D. starting in the fall of 2022. I am interested in the genetics of neurodevelopmental diseases, ultimately with an eye towards discovering new possibilities for genetic therapeutic treatment.

I am currently working on analyzing de novo variants in Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) from large whole exome sequencing biobanks. My focus is on not only exploring questions now answerable with ever increasing cohort sizes, but also on increasing our understanding of the genetic structure of ASD and related neurodevelopmental disease. My work is often in collaboration often in collaboration with the Simons Foundation Autism Research Initiative (SFARI).

I graduated from Princeton University with a Bachelors of Arts in Mathematics in 2017, where I focused on Analysis and Nonlinear PDEs. Before joining the lab, I worked as a software engineer for the Fixed Income Securities Core Calculations team at Bloomberg L.P. for two years and then as the technological co-founder of a biotech start up. I have been volunteering as a mentor to high school boys ever since graduating college, helping the young fellows to acquire the virtues necessary for a happy life and to learn how to be great men one day. In my free-time, I enjoy reading (anything from Tolstoy to G.M. Hopkins), learning fingerstyle guitar songs (or at least trying), working on side projects with friends, and running.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joseph-obiajulu/