Nick Kinney

My interest in human genetic diversity seeks to understand the function of repetitive DNA. For decades repetitive DNA was referred to as junk; however, a growing body of evidence suggest that some repetitive elements are leveraged by natural selection for efficient evolution. My recent contributions to this field demonstrate that some repeats – specifically microsatellites – vary in people of different ethnicity. My work on chromatin folding seeks to understand how the human genome folds within the boundary of the nucleus. This problem is intriguing because two meters of DNA is confined to a space just a few micros across. Simulations show that randomly folding chromatin leads to catastrophic entanglement; thus, chromatin must be organized. My recent publication in this field invents new ways to economically fold chromatin and quantify its organization. My capabilities are computational. I am an expert in a variety of programming languages including Python, Perl, C, MATLAB, MySQL, R, and PHP. I also have experience with machine learning, neural networks, artificial intelligence, and API development.

Data Science