CompBio Cafe BWCB

In this episode, Melyssa and Jenea interview Dean Lee (Novartis) about his initiative Figure One Lab.
Figure One Lab helps people build a computational biology (compbio) portfolio by re-enacting Figure 1 of biology papers. We discuss key insights for using storytelling to land computational biology roles in biotech and pharma.

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The CompBio Cafe Podcast is brewing up fresh perspectives in the CompBio world. Hosts Jenea Adams and Melyssa Minto, PhD are two trained computational biologists who serve the Black Women in Computational Biology Network (BWCB).
Learn more about us at linktr.ee/bwcb.
Subscribe to CompBio Cafe wherever you get your podcasts, and leave us a review once you've listened to a few episodes.

Melyssa and Jenea discuss how they keep up with comp bio via social media, conferences, and the literature.
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The CompBio Cafe Podcast is brewing up fresh perspectives in the CompBio world. Hosts Jenea Adams and Melyssa Minto, PhD are two trained computational biologists who serve the Black Women in Computational Biology Network (BWCB).
Learn more about us at linktr.ee/bwcb.
Subscribe to CompBio Cafe wherever you get your podcasts, and leave us a review once you've listened to a few episodes.

We talk to Aneesa Valentine, MS, about everything from bioinformatics to data science and AI. After leaving her PhD program, she embarked on a journey in data science. We explore her experience outside of academia and into the world of data science and AI.

About Aneesa
Aneesa is a Data Scientist and Researcher at heart.

She earnestly began Biosciences Research during undergrad, where she participated in several
Research Honors programs (MARC, C-STEP etc.). Throughout her undergraduate tenure, in
addition to conducting research at her alma mater Brooklyn College, she interned at several R1
institutions allowing her to contribute to research projects spanning Biophysics, Microbiology &
and Genetics.

Post undergrad, she completed a Post Baccalaureate Research Program (PREP) at Tufts
University, pushing the boundaries of Infectious Diseases research using humanoid models of
gastrointestinal fungal infection.

On par with her academic career pursuits, she began her PhD in Bioinformatics at the Albert
Einstein College of Medicine where she became enamored with Computational methods,
specifically supporting Genomics Research. Though the data she generated contributed to a
research publication during her brief graduate tenure, her love for algorithms prematurely drew
her to an industry career in Data Science & AI.

She effectively “mastered out” of her program, and more recently became a Data Scientist in the
commercial Data Science space. Since then, she has developed real-world Machine Machine
Learning & Analytics expertise by leading and contributing to projects impacting millions of
individuals.

Aneesa’s domain expertise in Biology and Bioinformatics has challenged her to exploit her
rigorous quantitative training and intellectual curiosity to generate impact beyond the academy.

Aneesa's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aneesav/


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The CompBio Cafe Podcast is brewing up fresh perspectives in the CompBio world. Hosts Jenea Adams and Melyssa Minto, PhD are two trained computational biologists who serve the Black Women in Computational Biology Network (BWCB).
Learn more about us at blackwomencompbio.org

Subscribe to CompBio Cafe wherever you get your podcasts, and leave us a review once you've listened to a few episodes!

In this episode, we dive into the world of spatial transcriptomics with Kalen Clifton, PhD Candidate Johns Hopkins University in the JEFworks Lab with Dr. Jean Fan. We highlight her latest Nature Communications paper detailing STalign: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-43915-7.

You can find our guest, Kalen Clifton, on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kalen-clifton/ and X (formerly twitter) here: https://x.com/kalen_clifton?s=20

Melyssa and Jenea attempt to answer the age-old question: what is computational biology?

We've reimagined our podcast! Here's a taste of what you can look forward to this season.