September 21, 2017

AMGEN Lunch Seminar
Diane Wu, PhD and Poornima Parameswaran, PhD
Co-Founders, Trace Genomics

The Trace Genomics microbiome sequencing platform enables screening of disease-causing microbes and interpretation of millions of beneficial organisms in the soil. Their machine learning platform enables simple integration of soil microbiome information into with field management information to help farmers identify optimal management conditions that increase soil health and sustainability as well as crop yields. Their innovative technology has received notable media coverage in Forbes, TechCrunch, Wall Street Journal, AgFunder, and Fast Company, and was most recently listed by Forbes as one of the 25 most innovative Ag Tech startups.

About Diane Wu
Diane Wu, PhD completed a BSc in Computer Science and Molecular Biology at SFU (Vancouver, Canada) and a PhD in Genetics at Stanford University. She was awarded a Stanford Graduate Fellowship and published her thesis on the cover of Nature Structural Molecular Biology, advised by Nobel Laureate Dr. Andrew Fire. Diane then joined the machine learning team at Palantir Technologies as one of their first data scientists, where she built predictive models for healthcare, merchandising, law enforcement, and fraud detection.

About Poornima Parameswaran
Poornima Parameswaran, PhD completed her BS in Molecular Biology at UT Austin, a PhD in Microbiology & Immunology at Stanford University with Nobel Laureate Dr. Andrew Fire, and her postdoctoral fellowship with MacArthur Fellow Dr. Eva Harris at UC Berkeley’s school of Public Health, where she also worked with the Ministry of Health in Nicaragua. She has been an author on eleven publications (371+ citations), where she used NGS technologies in novel ways to address fundamental questions in pathogen-host interactions.