Ryan Dale, Ph.D.

Senior Scientist; NICHD Scientific Information Officer; Head of BSPC
Bldg 6A Rm 1A16, ryan.dale@nih.gov
After a Masters in Oceanography and a Ph.D. in Marine Biology from the University of Delaware, Ryan came to NIH in 2009 as the bioinformatician for a group of six PIs and about 40 post-docs in NIDDK (Laboratory of Cellular and Developmental Biology, LCDB). From 2009-2018, he became a developmental biologist, analyzed thousands of high-throughput sequencing libraries across hundreds of experiments, and led the bioinformatics on most papers published by the group. During that time he developed open-source software packages in Python, R, and C (some of which have been downloaded tens of thousands of times), contributed to many other open source software packages, co-founded the Bioconda  project, and led workshops teaching computational skills to biologists. In 2018 he started at NICHD as Scientific Information Officer, founded the Bioinformatics and Scientific Programming Core, and has been growing the total bioinformatics capacity of the institute through collaborations and training ever since.

Caroline Esnault, Ph.D.

Staff Scientist
Bldg 6A Rm 1A17, caroline.esnault@nih.gov
While completing her PhD in Molecular Genetics at the University of Lyon, France, Caroline taught Statistics, Evolution and Population Genetics. Her thesis and postdoctoral work focused on understanding the impact of transposable elements on the genome of a variety of organisms. She joined NICHD in 2011 as a postdoctoral fellow in the group of Henry Levin, where she managed the lab’s high-throughput sequencer, in addition to consulting for her teammates on statistics and sequence analyses. She became fascinated with Next Generation Sequencing and learned programming in Python, Perl and R to develop or optimize the bioinformatics tools she needed. She joined the BSPC in 2018 to provide the NICHD bioinformatics core with expertise at the interface of biology and computer science.

Apratim Mitra, Ph.D.

Staff Scientist
Bldg 6A Rm 1A17, apratim.mitra@nih.gov
Apratim completed his Ph.D. in computational biology from the University of Maryland, College Park before joining NICHD in 2013 as a post-doctoral fellow in the lab of Karl Pfeifer. There, he worked on understanding the functions of a conserved long non-coding RNA while being closely involved in the planning and analysis of several other projects both in his lab and with collaborators in the Division of Developmental biology (DDB). As a result, he learned concepts of developmental biology and contributed to several projects in diverse contexts and co-authored multiple scientific articles. Apratim enjoys the challenge of multi-disciplinary science and has extensive experience in many aspects of bioinformatics and statistical analysis. He enjoys contributing to the development of a strong bioinformatics community and support network to enable exciting new science in the institute.

Gennady Margolin, Ph.D.

Staff Scientist
Building 6, Room 4B412, gennady.margolin@nih.gov
With a background in exact sciences and some biology, Gennady came to NIH in 2008 as a Research Fellow at NIDDK to develop skills and work on projects utilizing emergent next-gen sequencing. He was also tasked with system administration of the sequencing core computational server. In 2013 he moved to NHGRI as a Bioinformatics Scientist and among other projects, focused on studying DNA methylation in cancer and using it to detect and classify cancers. Recently, in 2019 he joined the BSPC group at NICHD and is working directly with the researchers in the Aquatic Models of Human Development group in Building 6. He is excited to take part in multiple research projects, utilize and share his knowledge and learn from others at the interface of biology, computers, and applied math.

Mira Sohn, Ph.D.

Bioinformatics Scientist (contractor)
Bldg 35 Rm 2D904, mira.sohn@nih.gov
After receiving her Ph.D. in 2013 in Biochemistry from Ewha Womans University (Seoul, South Korea), Mira expanded her research experience to Cell Biology in NICHD (Bethesda, MD) and the Carnegie Institution for Science (Baltimore, MD) as a postdoctoral fellow. After finishing her postdoctoral training in 2019, she discovered a new passion for bioinformatics. As a self-taught amateur bioinformatician, she not only taught herself R and Python but also blog-posted bioinformatics self-projects using public datasets. Moreover, she trained her skills by conducting a volunteer bioinformatics project quantitatively comparing multiple alignment algorithms in the context of bulk RNA-seq analysis. In 2021, she joined the BSPC as a bioinformatics scientist collaborating with diverse labs in Building 35.

Alicia Evans, B.S.

Research Software Engineer
Remote, alicia.evans@nih.gov
Before pursuing an interest in science, Alicia spent 15 years in the corporate world as a full-stack software and DevOps engineer, specializing in cloud technology and developing a wide variety of software applications. A native of New Jersey, she completed her associate in science degree in 2021 her B.S. in Microbiology and Cell Science from University of Florida in 2024. Alicia got a taste for research as a 2022 summer intern for NICHD BSPC. She returned to BSPC as Research Software Engineer in 2023 to apply her software development expertise to bioinformatics challenges.

E. Sally Chang, Ph.D.

Bioinformatics Training Program Manager; NICHD Office of Education & BSPC
Bldg 31 Rm 1B44; sally.chang@nih.gov
Sally holds an MA and PhD in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from the University of Kansas, where her research shed light on the genomic underpinnings of major evolutionary transitions within Cnidaria (jellyfish and their relatives). As a postdoc at the National Human Genome Research Institute, her work promoted cnidarians as biomedical models through development of high-quality genomic resources. Prior to her graduate research, Sally had no experience with bioinformatics. After having to get up to speed on her own, she has pursued opportunities to help others do the same. Her teaching and mentoring experiences have encompassed many audiences and topics - from a seven-week introduction to bioinformatics for researchers to a coding camp for middle schoolers. Most recently, she was a Genomics Education Specialist at the National Center for Biotechnology Information, training people to conduct analyses using NCBI resources and managing the virtual workshop program. She started at NICHD in August 2024, where she will use this expertise to build computational skills amongst the trainee community.

Matthew Tyler Menold, B.S.

Post-baccalaureate Intramural Research Training Award Fellow
Bldg 6A, Rm 1A17, matthew.menold@nih.gov
Tyler earned his B.S. in Biology from the University of Massachusetts Boston. His research experience, under the mentorship of Dr. Richard Humber, involved working with two species of entomopathogenic fungus to assess their potential as natural pesticides. An online programming course from Stanford University sparked Tyler's interest in computational work, particularly in computational biology. Post-graduation, Tyler pursued a second degree in Computer Science from the University of Oregon, which he plans to complete alongside his two-year post-baccalaureate fellowship. Tyler aims to apply to a Ph.D. program in Bioinformatics and, in the long term, aspires to head a research group. Outside of academia, he enjoys surfing, diving, and training in Brazilian jiu-jitsu.

Emma Smith, B.A.

Post-baccalaureate Intramural Research Training Award Fellow
Bldg 6A Rm 1A17, emma.smith3@nih.gov
Emma graduated from the College of Wooster in 2024 with a B.A. in biology. At Wooster, she completed a senior thesis in the Kelly lab. Emma’s project combined wet and dry lab techniques to better understand the role of the disease associated RNA-binding protein Nab2 in pre-mRNA splicing. Her interest in computational biology stems from her summer internship in 2023 with the McCoy lab at Johns Hopkins University where she used statistical approaches to examine genomic influences on the occurrence of human embryonic aneuploidy. While at the NIH, Emma hopes to expand her skill set in bioinformatics to prepare for a PhD in human genetics or bioinformatics. Outside of science, Emma enjoys rock climbing, backpacking, and playing soccer.

Brandon Fuller, B.S.

Post-baccalaureate Intramural Research Training Award Fellow
Bldg 6A Rm 1A17, brandon.fuller@nih.gov
Brandon graduated from San Diego State University in 2024 with a B.S. in Computer Science. He discovered the field of bioinformatics in his last year of undergrad and became delighted at the prospect of being able to program while answering biological questions, and therefore decided to pursue a career in bioinformatics research. He joined Dr. Arun Sethuraman’s lab at SDSU and focused on building a machine learning model to find associations in the phenotypic traits of hop plants. After graduating, he completed a summer research internship with Dr. Tiffany Amariuta at the University of California San Diego where he worked on improving the ability of machine learning models to predict gene expression from a DNA sequence. During his time at the NIH, he is excited to gain experience and diversify his skillset in bioinformatics before applying for PhD programs.

Previous Members

• Eric Chang (post-bac, 2018-2019)
• Sydney Hertafeld (post-bac, 2018-2020)
• Nicholas Johnson (post-bac, 2019-2021)
• Arjun Mittal (post-bac, 2020-2021)
• Eva Jason (post-bac, 2020-2022)
• Henry Zhang, Ph.D. (staff scientist, 2016-2023)
• Kiersten Campbell (post-bac, 2021-2023)
• Gus Fridell (post-bac, 2021-2023)
• Ally Questell (post-bac, 2023-2024)
• Shelby Ferrier (post-bac, 2023-2024)
• Lilly Shatford-Adams (post-bac, 2022-2024)