Bioinformatics Analysts:

Juan Perin, MS
Bioinformatics Specialist
bic_AT_email.chop.edu
267-426-7274

Juan is a bioinformatician who has worked with the Bioinformatics Core (BiC) at Children's Hospital since 2004. He received his master's degree in bioinformatics from the University of the Sciences in Philadelphia after completing his undergraduate work in physics and computer science at St. Joseph's University. Juan's primary duties include the administration of the core's high-end computer systems and developing databases and programs to facilitate the progress in various research endeavors. Most recently, Juan's interests have been in the development and application of algorithms for copy number detection, in collaboration with CBMi and the Center for Applied Genomics. His other interests include sequence analysis and microarray data mining.

Zhe (Jim) Zhang, PhD
Bioinformatics Scientist
zhangz_AT_email.chop.edu
267-426-7021

Dr. Zhang holds a doctorate in biomedical informatics and a master's degree in cell and molecular biology. His primary research interest is in the statistical and functional analysis of gene expression microarray data. He provides Children's Hospital researchers with such analytical services as experimental design consultation, bioinformatics training and expert microarray data analysis. Dr. Zhang's functional genomic analysis experience has enabled him to pursue a wide variety of research projects in collaboration with Children's Hospital researchers, including pattern recognition of metabolic pathway abnormalities in mitochondrial diseases, identification of epigenomic-mediated effects in lupus, and diagnostic marker discovery in developmental diseases.

Michael Xie, PhD
Associate Bioinformatics Scientist
xiem1_AT_email.chop.edu
267-426-0675

Dr. Xie holds a doctorate degree in Bioinformatics and a master’s degree in Chemistry. His range of expertise covers such varied disciplines as statistics, data mining, machine learning, image analysis, software programming, and website design. Dr. Xie’s expertise in multiple areas of relevance in the academic research setting enables him to aid researchers with the analysis of data from expression microarrays, proteomics platforms, and biological sequences. Dr. Xie also provides support for gene function and pathway analysis, experimental design, pattern recognition, biomarker identification, text mining and training in many areas of bioinformatics and genomics. Before joining the Bioinformatics Core at Children’s Hospital in 2007, Dr. Xie served as a graduate assistant at the BioCore facility and teaching assistant at Temple University.

Monica D'Arcy, MS
Bioinformatics Specialist
darcym_AT_email.chop.edu
215-590-4856

Monica began working full time as a bioinformatics specialist for the BIC in late 2008. She has an undergraduate in mathematics and computer engineering from the University of Pennsylvania and a Masters degree in epidemiology from Temple University. Prior to starting full time with the BiC, she worked part time as a software developer for projects in the White lab while getting her Master's degree in epidemiolgy. She was also the teaching assistant for all graduate public health statistics courses while at Temple. In her life before CHOP, Monica worked as a software developer at a day trading company in Austin, TX. She is currently developing software applications for Dr. Monos in immunology and the framework for the next generation sequencing (NGS) analysis pipeline being developed at BiC. She is especially excited to be learning more about genetic and molecular epidemiology.

Michael Grauer, MS
Bioinformatics Specialist I
grauerm_AT_email.chop.edu
267-426-9375

Mike Grauer started as a bioinformatics specialist in fall of 2009 after a 10+ year career as a software engineer. Mike's undergraduate work was in History and Computer Science at the University of Texas at Austin, followed by an MS in Computer Science from Drexel University. He is working on the CNV project at BiC, along with helping to develop the NGS pipeline. Mike is thrilled to be back in a research environment, and excited to catch up on the latest research in genomics and bioinformatics. Since one of Mike's professional interests is algorithm development, he feels fortunate to be working in the bioinformatics field.

Bioinformatics Core Management:

Xiaowu Gai, PhD
Bioinformatics Core Director
gai_AT_email.chop.edu
267-426-7023

Dr. Gai is a geneticist and bioinformatician with over nine years of experience in the field. After receiving his doctoral degree in genetics, he began his career in bioinformatics as the first database manager of the maize genome database, ZmDB. He has served as a bioinformatics scientist since 2001, previously at Iowa State University and currently at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. Dr. Gai provides campus-wide bioinformatics support and consultation utilizing his extensive expertise in many areas in the field, including sequence analysis, expression data analysis, biological databases and genome-wide genotyping analysis. Recently, Dr. Gai has been developing a set of bioinformatics tools for detecting chromosomal copy number changes in collaboration with Tamim Shaikh, PhD, Eric Rappaport, PhD, and the Center for Applied Genomics, headed by Hakon Hakonarson, MD.

Peter White, PhD
Faculty Director, Bioinformatics Core
white_AT_genome.chop.edu
215-590-5241

Dr. White is a molecular geneticist interested in using bioinformatics to identify the molecular aberrations responsible for human disease. Specifically, his lab's emphasis on the mining of peer-reviewed scientific literature and gene-based integration of disparate data sets has led to well-used publicly accessible bioinformatics applications such as eGenome http://genome.chop.edu/ and FABLE http://fable.chop.edu/. His continuing research involves advancing the methodology used in natural language processing and the directed application of findings to improve healthcare in pediatric disease. Dr. White received his doctorate in molecular genetics from the Washington University in 1992 and is currently the director of the Center for Biomedical Informatics at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. He also holds a research associate professorship at the University of Pennsylvania in the Department of Pediatrics.