Sasha Bacot

Pronouns: she/her 

Current research project: I am broadly interested in bioinformatics and computational omics. At Duke, I investigate the mechanisms of mitochondrial DNA quality control and cellular responses to mitochondrial DNA damage. My research at Duke combines wet-lab experimentation (in C. elegans) with computational methods. I have also spent two summers conducting purely computational research at Boston University and Los Alamos National Laboratory; these summer projects focused on transcriptomic and epigenomic data processing. 

How she got involved in research: I became involved in research at Duke during my freshman year; I cold-emailed a few PIs that I was interested in working with, and chose to work under Dr. Joel Meyer (who is still my PI!). I spent the summer after my freshman year taking classes on campus and building my research project.