Julia Ponomarenko

Dr. Julia Ponomarenko has leaded the CRG Bioinformatics Core Facility since March 2015. She holds the M.Sc. degree in physics from the Novosibirsk State University, Russia, and the PhD in computational biology from the Institute of Cytology and Genetics, Novosibirsk, Russia. In 2002, Julia moved to the San Diego Supercomputer Center of the University of California San Diego (UCSD), USA, where until 2015 she had served as the Principal Investigator funded by the USA NIH (NHGMS, NIAID) and NSF agencies. Dr. Ponomarenko’s research interests include immunology, structural bioinformatics, transcriptomics, analysis of NGS data, and development of biological databases and bioinformatics software. During her tenure at UCSD, Julia had mentored PhD students and taught graduate bioinformatics courses at UCSD; she organized and directed the Bioinformatics course for the UCSD PhD program in Biomedical Sciences and the course “Immunoinformatics for Biotech and Pharmaceutical Industry Professionals” at the UCSD Extension. For her contribution into mentored high school students for Science Olympiads and for the UCSD summer computational program, in 2013, Julia was awarded the UCSD Certificate of Excellence. Dr. Ponomarenko is an editor for the journals “ISRN Bioinformatics” and “Frontiers in Immunotherapies and Vaccines” and reviewed for Bioinformatics, Molecular Immunology, PLOS ONE, Proteins, Journal of Molecular Biology, Nature Biotechnology, BMC Bioinformatics, BMC Structural Biology, and ICSB society affiliated conferences. She has also served on the grant review panels for the USA National Science Foundation and grant agencies of New Zealand, Israel, Belgium and other countries.