Industry#
Predictive Design Engine Tech Lead
Jan 2026 – Present
Inari Agriculture
- Technical lead for the Predictive Design Engine, Inari’s agentic AI platform for designing gene edits
- Co-lead strategic planning and roadmap development for the platform
- Advance the platform’s scientific capabilities through model architecture, training data, data quality, and benchmarking
- Lead model capability development across multiple product concepts, aligning model priorities with product goals
Model Capability Lead
Jan 2024 – Dec 2025
Inari Agriculture
- Led development of strategic predictive modeling solutions for R&D needs
- Managed a cross-functional team of 8–9 computational biologists and machine learning scientists building AI-enabled models
- Mentored junior colleagues in computational biology and machine learning
Platform Manager, Computational Biology
Jan 2023 – Jan 2024
Inari Agriculture
- Built a team of 10+ computational biologists and data analysts across the US and Ghent, Belgium, in the Computational Biology platform
- Developed strategic initiatives to expand computational biology capabilities for R&D
- Mentored junior scientists to foster growth and innovation within the team
Data Analytics & Automation Lead, Science Platform
Oct 2020 – Jan 2023
Inari Agriculture
- Led and managed the Data Analytics & Automation team in Inari’s Science Platform
- Developed team members to strengthen bioinformatics support across R&D
- Partnered with cross-functional teams to expand data analytics and high-throughput automation capabilities
Scientist II, Computational Biology
Jan 2019 – Sep 2020
Inari Agriculture
- Major contributor to the Inari maize HapMap, now used across science and product teams (Inari Game Changer Award, 2020)
- Built population-genetics methods to annotate deleterious SNPs and prioritize variants for CRISPR-Cas editing, leading to a patent application
- Characterized Inari maize germplasm and improved genomic selection accuracy using biological priors
- Built sequence-capture and de novo assembly pipelines to validate edit targets in germplasm without reference genomes
- Organized Inari’s Bioinformatics Guild (2020) and co-organized the Plant Breeding & Population Genetics Guild (2019)
Academia#
Member, Biology Leadership Council
Aug 2023 – Present
University of Florida
Advise Department of Biology leadership, faculty, and students.Postdoctoral Researcher (Ross-Ibarra Lab)
Jun 2016 – Dec 2018
University of California, Davis
- Population genomics of structural variation in the maize wild relative teosinte
- Studied adaptation in plant genomes and functional constraint regions to inform crop improvement
- Collaborated on the NSF-funded Panzea project linking genotype and phenotype in maize
PhD Research Assistant (Barbazuk Lab)
Sep 2010 – May 2016
University of Florida
- Characterized the genome-wide alternative splicing landscape of maize and other monocots, including how splicing diverged after whole-genome duplication (first-author papers in Genetics and Frontiers in Plant Science, 2017)
- Integrated epigenomic and transcriptomic data to study how epigenetic marks relate to splicing and expression
- Contributed to the NSF-funded Amborella trichopoda and maize W22 reference genome projects
- Designed a sequence-capture probe set for white clover (Trifolium repens)
Education#
PhD in Botany (Computational Biology)
2016
University of Florida
Dissertation on the alternative splicing landscape of maize and other monocots. This work provided the preliminary data for NSF Plant Genome Research Program award #1547787.MS in Biology
2010
Central Washington University
BS in Biology
2007
Nanjing Normal University
Skills#
Leadership & Strategy#
- Computational biology strategy and multi-year model roadmaps
- Building and scaling cross-functional teams (computational biologists, ML scientists, data analysts) across sites
- Aligning model priorities with R&D and product goals
- Partnering with R&D, product and executive leadership
- People development and mentoring
AI & Modeling#
- Agentic AI systems for biological design
- Large language models and biological foundation models
- Sequence-expression-function-phenotype predictive models
- Model benchmarking, training-data and data-quality strategy
- Machine learning and statistical genomics
AI-Enabled Computational Biology#
- Target discovery and prioritization
- CRISPR-Cas multiplex edit design
- Population, functional and comparative genomics
- Systems biology and multi-omics
Service, Teaching & Talks#
Peer review. 36 verified reviews for 18 journals, including G3 (8), Molecular Plant (5), BMC Plant Biology (3), Applications in Plant Sciences (3), The Plant Cell, Genetics, Molecular Biology and Evolution, Molecular Ecology, and Heredity (Web of Science reviewer record).
Leadership & community. Biology Leadership Council, University of Florida (2023–present) · Organizer, Bioinformatics Guild, Inari (2020) · Co-organizer, Plant Breeding & Population Genetics Guild, Inari (2019) · Committee member, Chinese Genomics online Meet-up (2017) · Department award, curriculum, and faculty search committees (UF and Central Washington University).
Teaching & mentoring. Mentor to scientists and research associates at Inari · Guest lecturer on linkage disequilibrium and GWAS, Applied Bioinformatics, UC Davis · Teaching assistant for Genetics, the HHMI Phage Genomics course, and introductory biology (UF and CWU) · Supervised undergraduate (HHMI, NSF STEP) and PhD rotation students.
Selected talks. Invited speaker, MAS-ASPB & University of Maryland Plant Symposium (2019) · Plant and Animal Genome XXV, San Diego (2017) · Department of Plant Sciences Seminar, UC Davis (2017) · Department of Plant Biology, University of Georgia (2015) · Annual Maize Genetics Conference (talk 2013; posters 2012–2017).
Awards & Fellowships#
- Game Changer Award, Inari Agriculture (2020)
- College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Dissertation Fellowship, University of Florida (2015)
- Summer Institute in Statistical Genetics Scholarship, University of Washington (2014)
- Graduate School Preeminence Award (Alumni Graduate Fellowship), University of Florida (2010)
- International Student Tuition Scholarship, Central Washington University (2009)
- Graduate Student Summer Research Fellowship, Central Washington University (2008)
- Master’s Research / Creative Activity Fellowship, Central Washington University (2008)