Vijay Shankar

Dr. Vijay Shankar is a bioinformatics staff scientist that directs the Bioinformatics and Statistics core at the Clemson University’s Institute for Human Genetics. He specializes in development and application of statistical approaches and analysis pipelines for interpretation of high-throughput multivariate data generated in biomedical research. Such data include those produced from next-generation sequencing (DNA- and RNA-seq), as well as metaproteomics and metabolomics. Dr. Shankar received his PhD in 2016 from the Biomedical Sciences program at Wright State University, working with Dr. Oleg Paliy on elucidating interactions between human gut microbiome and host pathophysiology through the use of multivariate statistics. The statistical discipline acquired through doctoral research was further developed and refined through his appointment as a bioinformatics research associate (funded by NIH COBRE grant awarded to the Eukaryotic Pathogen Innovation Center) at Clemson University where he helped uncover insights in diverse biological fields and research models. These include genetic characterization in plums, chickens and in environmental microbes, transcriptional responses in biting midges and eukaryotic pathogens such as trypanosomes, and characterization of the developmental biology in swine and bovine. Dr. Shankar’s research now focuses on developing and utilizing new statistical methodologies for unraveling the complexity within single-cell RNA-seq data and integration of multiple ‘omics’ data to uncover insights at the systems-level. He also leads a team of bioinformaticians and systems administrators that manages the 40 node DELL EMC cluster at the Clemson Institute for Human Genetics. The cluster was purpose-built to serve the needs of the researchers at the institute.