Kareena Joshipura

I am Kareena Joshipura, an incoming senior at Mount Holyoke College, Massachusetts studying Statistics and Biology. I am from Mumbai, India’s largest city. After graduating, I hope to secure a job in a company that integrates data and biology, get experience in the field and then pursue Bioinformatics at a higher level. My dream job would be a healthcare analyst. 

Research Area

At WashU, I am working in Dr. Peter Jin’s lab where we focus on rare diseases – their cause, diagnosis, and preventative measures to bridge the gap in knowledge that exists surrounding them. Cerebral Palsy (CP) is a common neurodevelopmental disorder in children and about 1 in 500 children presents with it. While the most common causes of CP are birth or pregnancy complications, almost 30% of the cases have no known cause and are assumed to be genetic. Using whole-genome and exome sequencing data, we want to find the cause of Cerebral Palsy in that 30% of the children. By doing this, we hope to locate a disease-causing variant in the gene sequence and utilize personalized treatment strategies for the patient to work towards a cure, and even prevention in the future.