About Me

Education

Ph.D. in Integrative Systems Biology (2023)

Focus: Evolutionary Systems Biology
University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA

M.S. in Bioengineering (2018)

Focus: Medical Product Engineering
Center For Medical Innovation
University of Pittsburgh Swanson School of Engineering, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA

Bachelor of Medicine & Bachelor of Surgery (2014)

Smt. NHL Municipal Medical College, Gujarat University, Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India
Internship: Vadilal Sarabhai General Hospital

Experience

Graduate Researcher @ Carvunis Lab (August 2017 - Present)
Department of Computational & Systems Biology, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine

Advisor: Anne-Ruxandra Carvunis
Research Topic: Understanding how evolutionarily novel micro proteins influence the fitness of an organism
Bioinformatics, Computational Biology, Evolution, Genetics, Genomics, Systems Biology

Technology Fellow @ Coulter Translational Research Partners II Program (January 2017 - June 2017)
Department of Bioengineering, University of Pittsburgh Swanson School of Engineering

Identify, develop, and commercialize projects undertaken by bioengineers and clinical faculty that address unmet clinical needs
Stakeholder Discovery, Intellectual Property Analysis, Reimbursement Strategy, Business Plan Development

Skills

Programming Expertise

Data management, data analytics, data visualization and version control
MATLAB, R, Python, Bash, SQL, mySQL, Git, github

Subject Expertise

Human health and biology
Evolutionary biology, systems biology, computational biology
De novo gene birth, genome engineering, next-generation sequencing, genomics
Phenomics, high-throughput screening, robotic handling
Biostatistics

Medical Product Development

Product ideation, prototyping, stakeholder discovery, intellectual property analysis, human factor engineering, reimbursement strategy, clinical trial design

Publications

Wacholder, A., Parikh, S. B., Coelho, N. C., Acar, O., Houghton, C., Chou, L., & Carvunis, A.-R. (2023). A vast evolutionarily transient translatome contributes to phenotype and fitness. Cell Systems. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cels.2023.04.002 (PDF)

Parikh, S. B.^a, Van Oss, S. B.^a, Castilho Coelho, N.^a, Wacholder, A., Belashov, I., Zdancewicz, S., Michaca, M., Xu, J., Kang, Y. P., Ward, N. P., Yoon, S. J., McCourt, K. M., McKee, J., Ideker, T., VanDemark, A. P., DeNicola, G. M., & Carvunis, A.-R. (2022). On the illusion of auxotrophy: met15Δ yeast cells can grow on inorganic sulfur thanks to the previously uncharacterized homocysteine synthase Yll058w. The Journal of Biological Chemistry, 298(12), 102697. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbc.2022.102697 (PDF)
^a these authors contributed equally

Parikh, S. B., Houghton, C., Van Oss, S. B., Wacholder, A., & Carvunis, A.-R. (2022). Origins, evolution, and physiological implications of de novo genes in yeast. Yeast, 39(9), 471–481. https://doi.org/10.1002/yea.3810 (PDF)

Parikh, S. B., Castilho Coelho, N., & Carvunis, A.-R. (2021). LI Detector: a framework for sensitive colony-based screens regardless of the distribution of fitness effects. G3 Genes|Genomes|Genetics, 11(2). https://doi.org/10.1093/g3journal/jkaa068 (PDF)

Vakirlis, N., Acar, O., Hsu, B., Castilho Coelho, N., Van Oss, S. B., Wacholder, A., Medetgul-Ernar, K., Bowman, R. W., 2nd, Hines, C. P., Iannotta, J., Parikh, S. B., McLysaght, A., Camacho, C. J., O’Donnell, A. F., Ideker, T., & Carvunis, A. R. (2020). De novo emergence of adaptive membrane proteins from thymine-rich genomic sequences. Nature Communications, 11(1), 781. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-14500-z (PDF)

Widdowson, C., Ganhotra, J., Faizal, M., Wilko, M., Parikh, S., Adhami, Z., & Hernandez, M. E. (2016). Virtual reality applications in assessing the effect of anxiety on sensorimotor integration in human postural control. 2016 38th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBC), 33–36. https://doi.org/10.1109/EMBC.2016.7590633 (PDF)