Tanner Koomar received his PhD from the University of Iowa in 2021 in the lab of Dr. Jacob Michaelson. He specialized in applying machine learning to the genetic etiology of psychiatric and developmental conditions, particularly autism. His work focused on unifying rare and common genetic burden, and also applied systems biology approaches to understanding common traits, particularly language ability in adolescents. This research was built on a foundation of whole genome sequencing and detailed linguistic assessment collected over a decade. He also developed and piloted a computerized rapid language screener which could collect the large sample sizes needed to power common-variant studies.
Tanner is a data scientist at Recursion Pharmaceuticals, which utilizes deep-learning to map the relationships within and between the full human genome and millions of compounds via transcriptomic and phonemic read-outs. He initially performed analytics supporting Recursion’s high throughput screening platform to track and optimize experimental execution and automation. In 2022, he joined a team building tools that enable bench scientists to rapidly plan, execute and analyze experiments to onboard new cell lines and genetic perturbation modalities. His work places an emphasis on large-scale data visualization. This is critical for the high throughput lab, which is capable of screening over a million compounds or genetic perturbations each week.