Welcome!

I am a Bioinformatics PhD candidate at the University of Georgia. I bring deep expertise in omics analytical pipelines, with particular strength in metagenomics and multi-omic integration. I'm interested in using computational biology to identify variants in highly conserved protein domains of gut bacteria that may influence disease through the gut-brain axis as well as projects involving the development of AI for rigorous statistical analyses in science and technology. Prior to beginning my graduate program, I worked as a researcher at the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention in the Office of Blood, Organ, & Other Tissue Safety and studied Cryptococcus transmission events in solid organ transplantations, which led to my interest in bioinformatics and computational biology. My thesis work in graduate school involves in-depth analyses of variants in the gut microbiome and potential implications for neurological diseases as well as a broad-scale metagenomics assessment of the potential of bioaerosolization of pathogenic bacteria from the water to the surrounding air in low-to-middle income countries.

Publications:

Penumarthi, L.R., Baptista, R.P., Beaudry, M.S., Glenn, T.C., Kissinger, J.C., A new chromosome-level genome assembly and annotation of Cryptosporidium meleagridis. Scientific Data, 2024.

Penumarthi, L.R., La Hoz, R.M., Wolfe, C.R., Jackson, B.R., Mehta, A.K, Malinis, M., Danziger-Isakov, L., Strasfeld, L., Florescu, D.F., Vce, G., Basavaraju, S.V., Michaels, M.G., Cryptococcus transmission through solid organ transplantation in the United States: A report from the Ad Hoc Disease Transmission Advisory Committee. Am J Transplant, 2021. 21(5): p. 1911-1923