Principal Investigator
Associate Professor Dr. Sarath Chandra Janga
Luddy School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering
Indiana University Indianapolis (IUI)
Department of Medical & Molecular Genetics
Center for Computational Biology & Bioinformatics
Division of Gastroenterology/Hepatology, Department of Medicine
Indiana University School of Medicine
Dr. Janga obtained his PhD (2008-2010) from the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Darwin College, University of Cambridge, UK. He received his Bachelors and Masters degrees in Bio-chemical Engineering & Biotechnology from Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi and has previously worked in the Laboratory of Computational Genomics, Center for Genomic Sciences, UNAM, Cuernavaca, Mexico where he was involved in understanding bacterial gene regulatory networks in the group of Dr. Julio Collado-Vides. He started his doctoral work at Cambridge in 2007. He was an Institute for Genomic Biology Fellow, at University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, working on applying computational and systems approaches to understanding regulation at post-transcriptional level and using genome mining techniques for identifying novel antibacterial pathways and compounds during his post-doctoral period (2010-2012).
Postdoctoral Researchers
Doaa Hassan Salem, PhD
Doaa H. Salem is a machine learning postdoctoral researcher at Janga lab and an adjunct lecturer at Bio-health informatics department at Luddy School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering at IUI. Her research interest focuses on the new directions for the application of data mining and machine learning techniques, particularly in computational biology, social networks, and cyber security. Currently her research work emphasizes on the application of machine learning combined with Nanopore technology for detecting modifications in RNA sequences. She is also interested in using machine/deep learning for predicting the association between RNA (particularly lncRNA) and various diseases as well as predicting the genotype-phenotype association.
PhD Students
Hunter Gill
Hunter Gill is a PhD student working in Dr. Janga’s lab. He develops command-line applications and databases to explore questions in RBP motif prediction, POP-Seq data analysis & PCR-based virus detection. While not in the lab, he enjoys hiking local & state nature parks, gaming, & spending time with pets.
Alexander Krohannon
Xander completed his Bachelor’s in Biochemistry at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology and recently completed his Master’s in Bioinformatics at IUI. He is currently a Ph.D. student in Janga Lab. His current research interests are in using next-generation sequencing (NGS) and other high throughput methods to understand cellular methods of RNA regulation. His previous work includes the development of a CRISPR-Cas13 sgRNA designer.
Master’s Students
Amulya Saini
Amulya did her post-graduation (2015-2021) in pharmacy from Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University, Hyderabad, India. She has exposure in drug discovery and development, clinical data management and data analysis. She is currently a Graduate Research Assistant in The Janga Lab. Her current research interests include scRNA sequence analysis and using machine learning methods in predicting protein RNA interactions.
Soumith Babburi
Soumith completed his bachelor’s degree in pharmacy from GITAM university, Hyderabad. He is a master’s student working in Janga lab, and his current research interest lies in the CRISPR- CAS RNA targeting system.
Simranjit Kaur Virk
Simranjit Kaur Virk completed her Graduation in Systems biology and Bioinformatics (2014) from Punjab University Chandigarh India. She has worked in U.S. healthcare Industry for 5 years. Now she is a master student of Bioinformatics working in Dr. Janga lab, and her current research interest lies in the using GWAS to find meaningful biological information.
Aliza Islam
Aliza Islam graduated in Biotechnology & Genetic Engineering from Khulna University, Bangladesh. Following her studies, she took on leadership roles at VSO Bangladesh, an international NGO, before transitioning to a position at INFOSYS USA. Currently, Aliza is advancing her education, pursuing a Master’s in Bioinformatics at IUI, with a keen interest in exploring the applications of nanopore sequencing technology in alternative RNA splicing.
Sharon Niharika Arava
Sharon earned a Bachelor’s Degree in Biomedical Engineering from Bharath Institute of Higher Education and Research, Chennai. Her current studies focus on the use of deep learning models for bioinformatics applications, and she is now working on image segmentation at Janga Lab while finishing her master’s degree.
Rohini Vemparala
Rohini completed her Bachelor of Dental Surgery degree in India and is currently pursuing her master’s in health informatics with the interest of going to dental school in the future. Her research interests lie in artificial intelligence and biomedical & clinical data analysis using machine learning algorithms. Her current work in the lab includes a project on dental informatics, with a primary focus on developing a highly accurate language model as a Clinical Decision Support tool for clinicians.
Tejaswini Repala
Tejaswini Repala earned her bachelor’s in dental surgery from Rajiv Gandhi University of Health Sciences in 2019. After dedicating three years to the dental field, she expanded her academic pursuits and is now working towards a master’s in bioinformatics. Currently, she is a research assistant at The Janga Lab, where she is immersed in a project focused on dental image analysis. By leveraging machine learning methods, she aims to revolutionize dental diagnostics and treatment planning, ensuring every patient receives precise and reliable care.
Undergraduate Students
Sahiti Somalraju
Sahiti is an undergraduate studying Biomedical Informatics with a specialization in Bioinformatics at IUI. She is intrigued by the role of bioinformatics in precision medicine and its application in diagnosing and treating diseases. Currently, she is working with direct RNA-sequencing to perform polyA tail analysis across human cell lines.
Chelsea Allanigue
Chelsea is an undergraduate studying Biomedical Informatics with a specialization in Bioinformatics at IUI. She has worked on a health disparity project using regression analysis methods in machine learning. Currently, she is curious about the use of next-generation sequencing as she explores the RNA sequencing pipeline.
Interns/Visiting Scholars
Currently, we’re not hosting any interns/visiting scholars. Go to our Join page for visiting our lab as an intern/visiting scholar.