Aroon Chande

Computational Biologist & Bioinformatics Engineer

mail@aroonchande.com

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I’ve spent ten-plus years working across clinical genomics, oncology, and drug development — from CDC pathogen surveillance and drug development at Seagen to clinical genomics at Color and the NIH All of Us program.

Experience

May 2022 — Present

Staff Bioinformatics Engineer

Color Health · San Francisco, CA

  • Co-own the computational infrastructure for the NIH All of Us return-of-results program, processing hereditary and pharmacogenetic variants for 200,000+ participants.
  • Led a full refresh of the pharmacogenetics product line for oncology care — combining literature review and computational analysis to prioritize new genes and variants.
  • Design and validate clinical genomics pipelines in a CLIA/CAP-accredited, FDA-regulated environment — collaborating with lab, clinical, and product teams to turn sequencing data into reproducible, analysis-ready results for patient return-of-results.
Aug 2020 — May 2022

Bioinformatics Scientist

Seagen · Seattle, WA

  • Built an R Shiny analysis platform enabling bench scientists to run ML-based clustering and differential gene expression analysis for drug development.
  • Facilitated analysis of a 30,000+ patient harmonized tumor RNA-seq dataset spanning public (TCGA, GTEx, cBioPortal) and internal data.
  • Served as lead developer and technical lead for an integrated platform supporting RNA-seq, proteomics, and IHC pathology annotation; supported design of new cancer cell lines and genome-wide editing screens.
May 2016 — May 2022

Scientific Advisor

Applied Bioinformatics Laboratory · Atlanta, GA

  • Collaborated with CDC on biosecurity-focused pathogen surveillance software for efficient reconstruction of pathogen genes and genomes from environmental samples.
  • Developed novel algorithms and high-performance platforms to simplify analysis of NGS data for detecting select agents (anthrax, Ebola, and other highly contagious viral diseases).
Mar — Aug 2020

COVID-19 Pandemic Response

Georgia Institute of Technology · Atlanta, GA

  • Lead developer for the COVID-19 Event Risk Assessment Planning Tool — serving 50 million risk predictions to 8 million users.
  • Lead developer of the MyTest platform for asymptomatic COVID-19 testing — the first campus-wide free testing program in the nation, facilitating over 112,000 tests.

Education

2020

Ph.D. Bioinformatics

Georgia Institute of Technology

  • Human computational genetics — models for disease burden across Colombia and South America, focused on complex diseases such as type 2 diabetes and coronary artery disease.
  • Visiting Scientist Fellowship, São Paulo Research Foundation (2018); Graduate Research Award (2017–2020).
2016

M.S. Bioinformatics

Georgia Institute of Technology

  • Graduate Research Award (2015–2016).
2013 — 2015

B.S. Microbiology & B.S. Biology

University of Iowa

Skills

Languages

Python · R · C++ · SQL · Bash · Terraform

Cloud & Infra

AWS · Docker · Kubernetes · CI/CD (GitHub Actions, CircleCI)

Pipelines & workflows

Nextflow · WDL / Cromwell · Conda / Bioconda · ETL pipelines

Full-stack dev

Flask · Django · FastAPI · R Shiny · React

Genomics

WGS · WES · RNA-seq · Microarray · Pharmacogenetics

Variant analysis

GATK · samtools / bcftools · BWA / minimap2 · VEP / SnpEff

Data & ML

ML clustering · Differential expression · Scientific computing

Selected publications

2021The Impact of Ethnicity and Genetic Ancestry on Disease Prevalence and Risk in ColombiaFrontiers in Genetics · Chande, A.T., Nagar, S.D., Rishishwar, L., Mariño-Ramírez, L., Medina-Rivas, M.A., Valderrama-Aguirre, A., +2Full text
2020Real-time, interactive website for US-county-level COVID-19 event risk assessmentNature Human Behaviour · Chande, A.T., Lee, S., Harris, M., Nguyen, Q., Beckett, S.J., Hilley, T., +2PDFFull textCode
2020Ancestry effects on type 2 diabetes genetic risk inference in Hispanic/Latino populations.BMC Medical Genetics · Chande, A.T., Rishishwar, L., Conley, A.B., Valderrama-Aguirre, A., Medina-Rivas, M.A., Jordan, I.K.PDF
2020The phenotypic consequences of genetic divergence between admixed Latin American populations: Antioquia and Chocó, ColombiaGenome Biology and Evolution · Chande, A.T., Rishishwar, L., Ban, D., Nagar, S.D., Conley, A.B., Rowell, J., +3PDFFull text
2019STing: accurate and ultrafast genomic profiling with exact sequence matchesNucleic Acids Research · Espitia, H., Chande, A.T., Nagar, S.D., Smith H., Jordan, I.K., Rishishwar, L.PDFFull textCode
2017Influence of genetic ancestry and socioeconomic status on type 2 diabetes in the diverse Colombian populations of Chocó and AntioquiaScientific Reports · Chande, A.T., Rowell, J., Rishishwar, L., Conley, A.B., Norris, E.T., Valderrama-Aguirre, A., +2PDFFull text
Full publication list →

Elsewhere