Simons Foundation

Data and Analytics Team

The Data and Analytics Team supports multiple data-driven initiatives within the foundation including analysis of genomic, phenotypic and demographic data generated by SFARI cohorts studies, annotation and data management for SFARI Gene database, ETL processes for SFARI Base and the foundation’s administrative databases. The team develops and maintains computational tools for analysis and responsible data sharing of genomic data and collaborates with internal and external investigators on data visualization and integration methodologies.

Technologies used by Data and Analytics Team include R, Python, Java, bash, PostgreSQL, MySQL, AWS, Globus, Linux, slurm, GitHub, GATK best practices, Bioconductor

People

Natalia Volfovsky, Ph.D.

Director, Data and Analytics

Natalia Volfovsky came to the Simons Foundation to oversee quantitative informatics analysis, data storage and data curation. Prior to joining the foundation, Volfovsky served as manager of the computational genomics group at the Frederick National Laboratory for Cancer Research (FNLCR) in Maryland where she was…

Irina Astrovskaya, Ph.D.

Senior Bioinformatics Engineer

Irina Astrovskaya joined the Informatics team at the Simons Foundation in 2017. Astrovskaya is designing and developing data analysis pipelines for next-generation sequencing data for variant detection and structural variant detection. Prior to joining the foundation, she completed her postdoctoral work at the University of Maryland…

Jake Hall, Ph.D.

Senior Bioinformatics Engineer

Jake Hall joined the Simons Foundation in 2018 as a member of the Data and Analytics team. Prior to that, he was a postdoctoral fellow in the Institute for Next Generation Healthcare at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York, where…

Bing Han, M.S.

Research Data Analyst

Bing Han joined the Simons Foundation as a research data analyst in July 2018. Prior to coming here, Han was a data analyst intern at a nonprofit organization, helping to write python functions for preprocessing donators’ information. He received his M.S. in biomedical engineering from…

William Jensen, M.S.

Senior Database Applications Analyst

Before joining the Simons Foundation in 2016, William Jensen was an analyst at Prometheus Research. During his time at Prometheus, Jensen worked primarily on SFARI projects, including the Simons Simplex Collection and the Simons Variation in Individuals Project. As a senior database application analyst with…

Olena Marchenko, Ph.D.

Bioinformatics Engineer

Olena Marchenko joined the Informatics team at the Simons Foundation in 2019. She is responsible for developing algorithms for large cohort omics studies and clinical data processing pipelines. Marchenko completed her graduate studies at the Cell Analysis and Modeling Graduate Program at the UConn Health…

Evan Molinelli, Ph.D.

Senior Software Engineer

Evan Molinelli joined the Simons Foundation in 2021 to work as a full stack engineer and data scientist for the Aging Brain project. Evan gained developer experience in the startup scene for seven years working in real time 3D graphics and data tooling at BioDigital,…

Dennis Vasquez Montes, M.S.

Research Data Analyst

Dennis Vasquez Montes joined the foundation the summer of 2019 as a member of the SFARI data and analytics team. Before starting that position, Vasquez Montes was a data analyst in the NYU Langone Health’s Spine Research Center, a high-output research center focused on exploring…

Simon Xu, Ph.D.

Senior Bioinformatics Engineer

Simon Xu joined the Simons Foundation as a Senior Bioinformatics Engineer on June 2018. He received his BA and PhD degree from Tsinghua University, majoring in Computer Science and performing research in artificial intelligence. Xu has been a core member and a leading scientist in…