Dhivyaa Rajasundaram, PhD

Rajasundaram has a scientific background in the field of computational and systems biology, particularly in omics data analysis. She has a PhD in Bioinformatics from the Max-Planck institute in Germany, with the dissertation focused on integrative analysis of multi-omics data. She implemented novel analysis pipelines using methods ranging from network-based approaches, multi-block analysis to machine learning methods based on the biological system under study and the research in question. She also has experience in pathogen bioinformatics through her postdoctoral work. Her varied background in multiple domains of bioinformatics support in the analysis of high-throughput data generated from basic, clinical, and translational research projects, and interpretation of the biological meaning of the results in close collaboration with the researchers.

Her current research is interdisciplinary and spans the fields of bioinformatics of complex diseases, computational genomics, systems biology and biomedical data analytics. She has led the analysis for numerous projects, including single cell transcriptomics, functional genomics, evolutionary genomics, comparative genomics, human microbiome, epi-genomics, whole genome association studies and many others.

Rajasundaram joined the Department of Pediatrics in 2019 and leads the Bioinformatics Core at UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh. The core is a resource to support the bioinformatics needs of investigators for sequencing datasets generated in house by the HSSC@CHP core at Rangos Research Center, as well as external sources. Her broad experience in multiple bioinformatics domains together with statistical expertise helps to develop data analysis pipelines of massively parallel sequencing datasets and employ best practices in building standardized workflows as well as customized, in-depth downstream analysis. The essence of a bioinformatics core is to provide a variety of data analysis services, but she also believes in empowering others to be able to do their own analysis through training events and workshops.