assis group

Raquel Assis, Principal Investigator

Raquel received a B.S. in Psychology and Zoology from the University of Florida in 2006, and a Ph.D. in Bioinformatics from the University of Michigan in 2011. She completed a NIH postdoctoral fellowship at the University of California Berkeley in 2013, joined the faculty in the Department of Biology at Penn State in 2014, and the faculty in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at FAU in 2019. Her major research interests lie in developing novel methods for elucidating connections between genotype and phenotype.

Contact: rassis@fau.edu

Andre Luiz Campelo Dos Santos, Research Scientist

Andre received a B.S. in History from Federal University of Ceará in 2013, a M.S. in Archaeology from Federal University of Pernambuco in 2016, and his Ph.D. in Archaeology from Federal University of Pernambuco in 2020. He worked as a Postdoctoral Researcher at Federal University of Pernambuco from 2020-2021 and in the DeGiorgio group at FAU from 2021-2023, and joined the Assis and DeGiorgio groups as a Research Scientist in Fall 2023. He works on a diversity of research problems, with a current focus on developing machine learning methods for predicting evolutionary targets of gene deletion.

Contact: acampelodossanto@fau.edu

Nafis Erfan, Ph.D. Student in Computer Science

Nafis received a B.S. in Electrical and Electronics Engineering with a minor in Computer Science from BRAC University in 2018, and a MBA from Dhaka University in 2022. He joined the Assis and DeGiorgio groups in Fall 2022, where his research focuses on designing robust machine learning methods for predicting associations between traits.

Contact: nafisne1377@gmail.com

Uwaise Ibna Islam, Ph.D. Student in Computer Science

Uwaise received a B.S. in Computer Science and Engineering from Chittagong University of Engineering and Technology in 2021. He joined the Assis group in Fall 2022, where his research focuses on developing machine learning methods for predicting associations between genes and phenotypes.

Contact: uwaiseibna03@gmail.com

Ria Kanjilal, Postdoctoral Researcher

Ria received a B.S. and M.S. in Electronics and Communication Engineering from West Bengal University of Technology in 2009 and 2014, respectively, and a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Central Florida in 2022. She joined the Assis and DeGiorgio groups in Summer 2022, where her research focuses on constructing anomaly detection algorithms for genomic data.

Contact: riakanjilal@usf.edu

Perry LaBoone, Ph.D. Student in Computer Science

Perry received a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Florida in 1979, a M.S. in Computer Engineering from Florida Atlantic University in 1986, a MBA from the University of North Florida in 1994, and a MAcc from the University of North Florida in 1999. He is also a registered Professional Engineer and a CPA. He joined the Assis group in Fall 2023, where his research focuses on studying evolutionary constraint on gene expression.

Contact: plaboone@fau.edu

Ksenia Macias Calix, Ph.D. Student in Computer Science

Ksenia received a B.S. in Biochemistry from Florida International University in 2020, and a M.S. in Bioengineering from Florida Atlantic University in 2021. She worked in the Assis group during her M.S. studies, and rejoined us in Fall 2023. Her research focuses on understanding the evolutionary trajectories of RNA secondary structures and protein tertiary structures.

Contact: kmaciascalix2019@fau.edu

Antara Anika Piya, Ph.D. Student in Computer Science

Antara Anika received a B.S. in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from Ahsanullah University of Science and Technology in 2014. She joined the Assis group in Fall 2021, where her research focuses on designing machine learning tools for predicting evolutionary divergence from gene expression data, as well as on understanding connections among evolution at gene sequence, gene expression, and protein structural levels.

Contact: apiya2021@fau.edu