Seminar: Finding the regulators: From transcription factors to non-coding RNAs

In this talk, Dr. Pena-Castillo will discuss her work on deciphering transcriptional regulation. Specifically, how pathway analysis is applied to find out which biological processes are regulated by a given transcription factor, and how she is computationally identifying and characterizing bacterial non-coding RNAs from RNA-seq data.

 
Dr. Pena-Castillo obtained her bachelor's degree in Information Systems Engineering at the ITESM in Mexico, her Master's degree in Computer Science at the University of Alberta, and her PhD at the Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg (Germany). She continued with a postdoc in bioinformatics in the Banting and Best Department of Medical Research at the University of Toronto. She is now associate professor in the Departments of Computer Science and Biology with a cross-appointment to the Discipline of Genetics at Memorial University.