Variant Effects Seminar Series (VESS)

Sergio is a computational biologist and biochemist passionate about building statistical and machine learning solutions to engineer living systems and advance biotechnology. My work focuses on developing novel computational approaches for functional protein engineering, with an emphasis on AI-driven enzyme design. I am currently pursuing a PhD at the University of Cambridge and the Wellcome Sanger Institute, working closely with Harvard Medical School.

Kortni is a PhD candidate in the Nguyen Ba Lab at the University of Toronto, Canada, where she utilizes deep mutational scanning to map how genetic variants alter protein function and drive rare genetic diseases. Her research focuses on rare disease genes and understanding how sequence variation influences transcription factor binding specificity. She uses Tiled-Region Exchange (T-REx) Mutagenesis, a novel high-throughput approach recently published by her and her lab, to systematically generate and study genetic variation at scale, using yeast as a model system. Kortni is also a co-founder and producer of the Variants and Us (VUS) Podcast, which explores the science behind variant interpretation and its translational impact on clinical genomics and precision medicine.