Studying how genomes express themselves

I work with a diverse network of students and collaborators across disciplines in science and engineering. Please contact me if you seek interdisciplinary training, including combined computational and experimental training in molecular and cellular biology.

To apply to join my lab, please refer to the open projects below, and send me an email with a copy of your CV, and apply to the Quantitative and Systems Biology program. If you are past deadline, please just send me a note. It may be possible to accept your application later.

I have funded research projects in the following topics:

  1. Bioinformatics of the structure and function of tRNAs and their cleavage products in eukaryotes
  2. New nontoxic combination drug therapies targeting protein synthesis in eukaryotic parasites using genomic data (Collaborations with Mike Ibba and Abhay Satoskar at OSU and Roger Linington at SFU)
  3. tRNAs for phylogenomic signatures in genome and metagenome data (collaborations with Zhong Wang at the Joint Genome Institute)
  4. Biophysical models of adaptation in the cellular organization of protein synthesis in bacterial and eukaryotic cells (collaborations with Karin Leiderman, Ajay Gopinathan, and Mike Cleary at UC Merced)
  5. Evolution of word meaning and effects of dialects on the evolution of language (collaboration with Bodo Winter, Rick Dale, Suzanne Sindi at UC Merced and Gary Lupyan at Madison)
  6. Information theoretical metrics to use functional motifs in phylogenomics (collaboration with Ivo Grosse at MLU, Halle-Wittenberg)
  7. Incorporating new systems biological considerations to theories on the evolution of the genetic code.

UC Merced is a small, young and vibrant campus with excellent access to Yosemite National Park, the Sierra Nevada mountain range and the Santa Cruz coastal beaches and mountains.

To apply for this position, please e-mail a covering email and attach your CV in pdf format.

For further information about our Molecules to Minds project related to our research on evolutionary linguistics, please see our write-up in Panorama.

Undergraduate Students

Attention CSE, Bioengineering, AM and Bio majors! Do you know how to program in Perl, Python or R? I have summer and fall internships for students to get research experience leading to publication. Please send me a CV and cover letter.

The Ardell Lab is also a partner in the National Science Foundation-funded Undergraduate Research Mentorship (URM) program in Computational Biology that is run by UC Merced’s Center for Computational Biology. The URM program is a fantastic way for UC Merced undergraduates to get involved in bioinformatics and computational biology research!