5.5 Years in a Balloon

Hey, I'm Jon Akutagawa

I am a graduate student in the bioinformatics track of the Program in Biomedical Sciences and Engineering at the University of California, Santa Cruz. I conduct research in the Brooks Lab. Angela is a phenomenal advisor and mentor.

Research interests

I am interested in cancer genomics, specifically the complex relationships between genes that initiate and dictate cancer progression. My current research is focused on 5' UTR mutations and their potential effects on the translational efficiency of cancer-related genes.

Other things

• I wrote a super hacky and very unfinished program to parse qPCR data from ViiA 7 instruments - you can find it in my github.
• I hope to get around to adding a short blog and some personal data visualization projects soon.
• Yes, the title refers to Jules Verne's first published work and the stated median time to completion for this PhD.