Our Team

Our team consists of five bioengineering students from UCSD - Harshil Shah, Justin Lagala, Yifei Ding, Sivagunalan Thamilarasan, and Varsha Mani - working under the mentorship of Dr. Daniel Zielinski. We are developing a machine learning model to predict bacterial translation efficiency for optimizing protein production, with each member bringing specialized expertise: Justin and Varsha focus on feature engineering and statistical analysis of translation-related features; Harshil leads machine learning implementation and feature selection optimization; Siva manages data collection, preparation, and correlation analysis while handling server infrastructure; and Yifei processes datasets to calculate translation efficiency, implements data filtering methods, and maintains our GitHub repositories. Together, we aim to create a robust, interpretable model that can accurately predict how changes in mRNA transcripts, tRNA availability, and codon usage affect translation efficiency, ultimately helping to streamline biologics production and advance our understanding of protein synthesis mechanisms.