Our Authors.
Ashok K. Sharma, PhD
Postdoctoral Scientist at Cedars-Sinai
USA
Ashok is a computational biologist. His research interests focus on using data mining and systems biology approaches to explore the therapeutic potential of host-associated microbiomes. Specifically, he is interested in elucidating the role of host-microbiome interactions in human health and disease.
He has a bachelor’s degree from Dr. Hari Singh Gour University and master’s from NIPER Mohali. He did his Ph.D. in computational biology from IISER Bhopal. During his Ph.D. years, he developed various computational models to analyze genomic and metagenomic datasets. He explored the effects of location and diet on shaping the function and composition of the microbiome in diverse Indian populations. These projects further enhanced his expertise in the field of large-scale sequencing data analysis.
He joined the Microbiomics lab at the University of Minnesota, USA as a Postdoctoral Research Associate in 2018. He used system-wide, multi-omics approaches to understand host-microbiome interactions in animal and human models in diverse physiological conditions. In addition, he has published multiple articles in collaboration with scientists and physicians and worked as a research mentor for a computational microbiology foundation course. As a research mentor, he has helped students to design new hypotheses and execute them from already published microbiome projects.
Given his interest in working with clinical and pre-clinical datasets, he joined Dr. David Casero and Dr. Suzanne Devkota's lab at Cedars Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles in Feb 2021. Currently, he is involved in the analysis and integration of multi-omics datasets to examine interactions between members of the tissue micro-environment and gain mechanistic insights into the etiology of complex metabolic diseases. His long-term goal is to identify pathogenic factors in IBD, become an independent academic researcher, and contribute societal benefits from microbiome-based research.