Nitya Sunkad
Year of Participation in STARS
Research Interests
Artificial Intelligence Bioinformatics and Computational Biology Security and Privacy
Research Mentor
Prof. Mohammed El-Kebir
Research/Engagement Experience
Interests
Computational biology, artificial intelligence, security, software development
How did I get interested in Computer Science?
I got interested in CS through the Technovation Girls program when I was a high school freshman.
What social interests matter to me?
Promoting professional development for freshmen @ Illinois :)
What is my most impactful college experience?
Vice chairing ACM@UIUC and working to revitalize the CS student community on campus as we make a full transition back to in person instruction.
These are a few of my favorite things!
Learning to cook new recipes, playing the piano, spending time with friends and family.
Research Description
Cancer is a multifaceted genetic disorder that develops as a result of the accumulation of genetic mutations. We focus on tumor phylogenetics, the development of algorithms to perform evolutionary analyses of tumor progression from the initial mutation to metastasis. This project will create a classification scheme for single-cell tumor DNA samples, by constructing a dendrogram, or tree structure, to cluster samples by degree of similarity. A visualization tool for this data can reveal valuable insights about the phylogeny of tumor samples collected through single-cell DNA sequencing.
Biography
Nitya Sunkad is a sophomore in Computer Science at UIUC. Currently, she serves as the Vice Chair of ACM@UIUC. Previously, she interned in bioinformatics at NASA GeneLab.