About me..
Manoj Hariharan, Ph.D
Sr. Staff Scientist
Salk Institute for Biological Studies
I am a computational biologist with keen interest in studying the molecular networks that regulate gene expression, using genomic tools to analyze post-transcriptional, transcriptional and epigenetic elements, with focus on human health and disease.
I joined the Salk Institute for Biological Sciences in October 2012. Here, I study the regulatory role of DNA methylation, and am working towards how it affects human health and disease.Working closely with various research groups at the Salk Institute I played a major role in several research projects including, mouse schizophrenia models, human progeria syndrome, embryonic reprograming using somatic cell nuclear transfer and polar body transfer etc. I was also the lead investigator in the CIRM-funded Center for Excellence in Stem Cell Genomics where we coordinated with several stem cell researchers in California to produce multi-omic datasets. I currently lead a team of researchers to work on identifying the role of DNA methylation in gene regulation, especially in U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) funded projects – ECHO, MBA, and PHITE. I am also part of the Wu Tsai Human Performance Alliance and the MOTrPaC consortium where we study the epigenetic mechanisms during training and exercise
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I have been a postdoctoral researcher at Prof. Michael Snyder's lab at the Department of Genetics, in Stanford University for four years. The main focus of my research has been the functional annotation of the human genome (ENCODE) with special attention to the combinatorial interaction of transcription factors to affect gene regulation. I was also Involved in several other projects like the analysis of genomic variants in the regulatory regions of the human genome. Prof. Snyder is Chairman, Dept. of Genetics, Stanford University,
I received Ph.D. in Biotechnology (Bioinformatics) from the University of Pune (India) after conducting research at the Institute of Genomics & Integrative Biology, Delhi, India, a CSIR lab under the Ministry of Science & Technology. During my Ph.D. I worked on the effectiveness of intronic microRNAs (miRNA) as a regulatory switch. My mentor, Prof. Samir K. Brahmachari was Director of IGIB and the Director General of CSIR while I was his student. He is currently Scientist at IGIB.
Previously, I received Masters' (M.Sc.) in Bioinformatics from Bharathiar University, Coimbatore, India and Bachelors' (B.Sc.) in Biotechnology from Dr. GRD College of Science, Coimbatore.
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