Zachery Mielko

I am a postdoctoral associate in Raluca Gordân’s Lab in the Department of Biostatistics and Bioinformatics at Duke University. Most of my research focuses on the binding and function of transcription factors; proteins that bind to DNA and regulate gene expression. I enjoy bridging computer science and biology in my research through the development of algorithms and software. Within computer science, I am particularly interested in string and graph algorithms. This comes together in my current project where I study how comprehensive k-mer measurements of protein-DNA interactions can be used to determine where proteins bind in genomes and synthetic DNA.

I also enjoy teaching programming workshops at Duke for graduate students, postdocs, and staff. Most of these are based off lessons from The Carpentries, a non-profit dedicated to teaching foundational programming and data science.