Bari Ballew

Bari Ballew has a diverse work experience in the field of bioinformatics and genomics. They are currently serving as the Senior Director of Data Science and Analytics at Sequence Bio since October 2022. Prior to this, Ballew worked at 54gene as the Senior Bioinformatics Scientist, Genomics and Data Science from January 2021 to October 2022. In this role, they led bioinformatics efforts and coordinated data cleaning and reporting for patient consent forms, questionnaire results, and genomic data. Ballew also set team policy and best practices and wrote SOPs.

Before joining 54gene, Ballew held positions at Leidos Biomedical Research, Inc., National Cancer Institute-NIH. From July 2020 to January 2021, they served as the Manager, Bioinformatics Development and Analysis, where they managed a team of six bioinformaticians and conducted pipeline development for various genomic analysis tasks. Prior to this role, Ballew worked as a Bioinformatics Scientist from January 2017 to July 2020, where they led a team and developed a modular pipeline for structural variant calling using multiple callers.

Ballew also has experience working at Personal Genome Diagnostics as a Scientist, Genome Sciences from January 2016 to November 2016. In this role, they analyzed next-generation sequencing data and developed an automated report generation tool. They collaborated with software engineers to establish requirements and testing strategies.

In their earlier career, Ballew worked as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the National Institutes of Health from March 2012 to December 2015. They explored the molecular basis of cancer susceptibility through genomic analysis and collaborated with various professionals in the field. Ballew also completed their PhD at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, where they focused on DNA damage repair and telomere maintenance.

Additionally, Ballew gained research experience during their undergraduate years. They worked as a Howard Hughes Undergraduate Research Fellow at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, investigating the synergistic effect of vaccine and antibody treatment in breast cancer. They also had an Undergraduate Summer Internship at Schering-Plough Research Institute, where they performed in silico testing of software for predicting the characteristics of molecules.

Overall, Bari Ballew has a strong background in bioinformatics and genomics, with experience in team management, pipeline development, data analysis, and research collaboration.

Bari Ballew obtained their Bachelor of Science degree in Cell and Molecular Biology from The Johns Hopkins University, where they studied from 2001 to 2005. Following their undergraduate program, they pursued their academic career further and enrolled at UC San Diego from 2005 to 2011. During this period, Bari successfully completed their PhD in Biology.