Yakov Pichkar
Ocala,FL
Summary
I am a unifier who connects ideas and data through statistics. To that end, I aim to find simple, elegant solutions. I have 8 years of experience analyzing human data related to physiology, history, and disease. My projects include analyses of biology, urban development, and language, both through work that I led and as part of collaborations across continents.
Overview
7
7
years of professional experience
Work History
Postdoctoral Researcher
Vanderbilt University
01.2024 - Current
- Postdoctoral fellowship where I developed pipelines that process gene expression data, from quality assessment and data cleaning to running analysis and visualizing results.
PhD. Candidate in Biological Sciences
Vanderbilt University
01.2018 - 01.2024
- Measured how genetic variation and disease risk is shaped by social, demographic, and evolutionary processes.
- Participated in the NeuroGAP-Psychosis project to identify genes linked to disease, working with specialists in anthropology and population genetics in the USA and Africa.
- Sped up a previous pipeline to identify FISH probe off-target interactions by >300%.
- Primary author on five manuscripts, presented results to seminars and conferences.
Rotation Research With Dr. Antonis Rokas
Vanderbilt University
08.2018 - 12.2018
- Contributed to a method identifying disease-causing genetic loci by combining GWAS results and measures of selection.
Education
Ph.D. - Biological Sciences
Vanderbilt University
Nashville05-2024
B.S. - Biochemistry
Stony Brook University
Stony Brook, NY01.2018
Skills
- DATA SCIENCE/MACHINE LEARNING, including regression regularization & kernel machines (SVM, clustering, convolution), random forest, neural networks
- SQL and PostgreSQL (with psycopg2)
- STATISTICAL METHODS (causal inference, power estimation, MCMC for optimization, Bayesian statistics)
- PYTHON, data exploration in Jupyter, analysis, data science (TF and PyTorch), and visualization
- R, data wrangling and visualization
- OTHER PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES: Scheme (lisp), MATLAB, etc
- GENOMICS/transcriptomics/RNAseq from QC and alignment to analysis and interpretation Both human genetics and model/non-model plants and animals
- GNU/LINUX (bash, awk, ssh, sed, etc)
- HPC, with Slurm scheduling
- COMMUNICATION-figure generation, writing academic and literature reviews, presentations, working virtually with teams across countries and time zones
Awards
Templeton Foundation Grant — Author and stipend recipient, total of $234,800 to the lab., Harold Stirling fellowship — Vanderbilt fellowships for excellent scholarship.
Hobbies and Interests
Tango, gardening, swimming, sheep herding, sourdough baking
Timeline
Postdoctoral Researcher
Vanderbilt University
01.2024 - Current
Rotation Research With Dr. Antonis Rokas
Vanderbilt University
08.2018 - 12.2018
PhD. Candidate in Biological Sciences
Vanderbilt University
01.2018 - 01.2024
Ph.D. - Biological Sciences
Vanderbilt University
B.S. - Biochemistry
Stony Brook University
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