About Me
Hello! I am an MD-PhD candidate at Johns Hopkins University. I am currently pursuing a PhD in Biomedical Engineering in the JEFworks lab. I am interested systems biology and data science and am excited about how computational and mathematical methods can be used to understand complexity in disease.
My current work focuses on how we can decipher the dynamics of cell transcriptional state changes within the context of tissue spatial organization. I hope to develop methods that enable us to better understand how cells behave in a spatially coordinated manner during disease development and therapy response.
Projects, Publications, and Software
- Gene count normalization in single-cell imaging-based spatially resolved transcriptomics. Genome Research 2024.
- VeloViz: RNA-velocity informed low dimensional embeddings of single cell transcriptomics data. Bioinformatics 2021. Software + tutorials.
- Computational challenges and opportunities in spatially resolved transcriptomic data analysis. Nature Communications 2021.
- Interactions between cancer cells and immune cells drive transitions to mesenchymal-like states in glioblastoma. Cancer Cell 2021.
Other Interests
Outside of my graduate research work, I am interested in data science education and medical education and in my free time, I like to read, go to art and history museums, and take photographs
Get in touch
Twitter 
Email: lylaatta [at] jhmi [dot] edu
