Daniel D'Andrea
Bioinformatician, Division of Psychological Medicine and Clinical Neurosciences
- dandread@cardiff.ac.uk
- 2.01- Desk 32, Hadyn Ellis Building, Maindy Road, Cardiff, CF24 4HQ
Overview
I hold a Master degree from the Federico II University of Naples in Computer Science and a Ph.D. degree from the Sapienza University of Rome in Bioinformatics (within the Ph.D. program in Biology and Molecular Medicine). My background is multidisciplinary and consists of strong programming skills as well as significant training in genomics and molecular biology.
My research interests are focused on: 1) identification of mechanistic insights through data analysis, integration and interpretation of ’omics data, with the aim to understand how specific changes affect complex phenotypes; 2) development of new tools to allow researchers analysing heterogeneous resources, testing their hypothesis and exploring their results in easy and at the same time exhaustive fashion; 3) analysis, exploration and interpretation of high-throughput sequencing data (single-cell and bulk RNA-seq, whole-genome-seq, whole-exome-seq, small RNA-seq and ChIP-seq) with a particular attention to investigate underlying mechanisms of complex biological systems, in particular to discover new biomarkers.
Biography
Currently, I am a Research Associate at MRC Centre for Neuropsychiatric Genetics and Genomics where my research focuses on the identification of potential molecular targets for therapeutic intervention in schizophrenia and other psychiatric disorders, in collaboration with Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Limited.
Previously, I worked in the Centre for Cell Signalling and Inflammation of prof. Guido Franzoso at the Department of Medicine in Imperial College London where my principal roles as cancer bioinformatician were 1) to develop a rational patient stratification strategy for supporting the clinical progression of the first-in-class GADD45β/MKK7 inhibitor, DTP3; 2) to identify new targets or pathways for clarifying and/or validating the role of NF-κB on metabolic adaptation in colon cancer through analysis of transcriptomic and metabolomic experiments as well as exploration of publicly available datasets.
During my Ph.D. in Biocomputing group headed by prof. Anna Tramontano, I dealt with different biomedical problems from both internal projects and external collaborators that gave me the opportunity to work with a variety of high-throughput experiments and to develop tools for improving/solving critical steps of analyses derived by system complexity. Yet, for the Italian Institute of Technology, I was responsible for the design and configuration of a High Performance Computing infrastructure for the analysis, storage and backup of genomic data.
Before starting my Ph.D., I worked for two years as Database Manager in the Department of Biology and Cellular and Molecular Pathology at University of Naples Federico II, where my main duties focused on planning, implementing and managing a specialized database of heterogeneous data from cancer patients/tissues/experiments.
Academic positions
Current post (Apr. 2019 – )
Senior Research Associate (Bioinformatician) at MRC Centre for Neuropsychiatric Genetics and Genomics, Cardiff University, UK.
Oct. 2014–March 2019
Research Associate (Cancer Bioinformatician) at Centre for Cell Signalling and Inflammation, Imperial College London, UK.
Oct. 2010–Sept. 2014
Ph.D./post Doc (Bioinformatician) at Biocomputing group headed by prof. Anna Tramontano, Sapienza University of Rome, Italy.
2008–2010
Database manager at OncoTech consortium, Department of Endocrinology and Molecular and Clinical Oncology, University of Naples Federico II, Italy.
2008–2009
Project manager at Department of Biology and Cellular and Molecular Pathology “L.Califano”, University of Naples Federico II, Italy.