J. Walker Gussler

Proactively managed many concurrent projects working with multiple stakeholders from diverse interdisciplinary teams. Expanded scope to include variant prioritization and selection from solid tumor samples.

• Bioinformatics lead for feasibility, verification, validation, product health and maintenance utilizing an infrastructure-first approach.
• Conducted many retrospective studies of large datasets to assist in corrective and preventative actions as well as in-silico confirmation studies.
• Honed an articulate and approachable communication style to effectively convey complex scientific results to technical as well as lay audiences in a persuasive manner.

Quick to adapt, I utilized creative software solutions via novel analysis pipelines to generate automated reporting. Obtained extensive knowledge of liquid biopsy detection of circulating tumor DNA.

• Participated in verification and validation projects for FDA/CLIA certification for product modifications.
• Modified or created various resources for pipelines including alternative reference genomes, new sample types, novel QC strategies, and new types of control samples.

Empowered non-technical state public health labs to leverage NGS assays to stymie Hepatitis C infection networks by:

• Led software development, testing, and manuscript preparation for hepatitis C outbreak source attribution models.
• Optimized feature engineering and selection for recency of infection classifier.
• Engineered data visualization tools including molecular network visualization and an application which displays real-time overdose predictions based on google trends data.