Rachel Karchin, PhD, is a professor of biomedical engineering, oncology, and computer science, with joint appointments at the Whiting School of Engineering and School of Medicine at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. She is a core member of the Institute for Computational Medicine.

A computational biologist, Dr. Karchin develops algorithms and software to analyze genomic data and interpret its impact on human disease. Her most recent work has focused on cancer and the effects of germline and somatic alterations and their contributions to progression models of tumor evolution. She led the computational efforts to identify driver mutations for the Johns Hopkins Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center’s pioneering cancer sequencing projects, and she co-led The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) PanCancer Atlas Essential Genes and Drivers Analysis Working Group.

Cancer Network asked Dr. Karchin about the contemporary search for cancer-driving gene mutations… Continue reading.