Matt Ralston

Matt Ralston

M.Sc. Bioinfo + 5 years industry exp. - - - Currently writing a DNA sequence alignment, quasi-mapper, and graph algorithm and manuscript (for bioRxiv). I play math rock on my guitar, I write open-source software on GitHub, I pay my bills in the DE-NJ-PA tri-state area near Delco, and I'm launching a DE-based LLC for Univ. of Delaware and local NGS sequencing projects.

Life science professional

Subject area expertise

For readers who are interested in my software development experience, visit /software. For readers who are interested in my /data_science roles, experience with bioinformatic algorithms and research related software, as well as my perspectives on architectures for application development and modeling perspectives, please visit my /data_science page. For readers interested in my expertise in systems administration and devops, please visit the /cloud_native page. For readers interested in more core life-science competencies, please visit /biosciences. For professionals who want to know more about my research experiences, check out /research. If you want, take a look at my /portfolio of public projects. If you are interested in contacting me about work opportunities please visit /contact.

Experience with laboratory techniques such as Western/Northern blot, RT-PCR, GC-MS, HPLC, ligation, restriction enzymes, ELISA, IHC/IF, FACS-Aria, Illumina library preparation. You name it!

Target audience: life scientists, molecular biologists, chemists, bench scienctists, and management professionals

Life science experience

If you are looking for a experienced molecular biologist, analytical chemist, and scientist with a balance of laboratory skills and statistics/analytical experience, look no further.

My experience with laboratory techniques begins with my Bachelor of Science (BSc Biochemistry, 2012) at the University of Delaware and the Delaware Biotechnology Institute where I performed Northern/Western blots, RT-PCR, Illumina RNA-seq, ELISA, cell culture, IHC, microscopy and many other techniques in GLP/aseptic environments.

My research included the prediction and validation of functional RNAs and elucidating their roles in both human/mammalian cells and in bacteria. I worked in areas as a generalist in 2 labs: the Helen Graham Cancer Center’s Center for Translational Cancer Research (CTCR, 2009-2012) and the Delaware Biotechnology Institutes laboratory for biofuels research under renowned chemical engineer, genetic engineer, and metabolic engineer Terry Papoutsakis.

While there, I performed the first strand-specific RNA-seq experiment in the Clostridia genus.

I used the Ribo-Zero kit and Epicenter’s ScriptSeq Illumina RNA-seq preparation kit to prepare RNA samples from aliquots sampled from my bioreactors to cross-validate novel RNA species, riboswitches, cis-antisense RNAs, lncRNAs, mRNAs, and other molecular species of the transcriptome, to then additionally validate by Northern blot.

Cancer research

While at the Helen Graham Cancer Center I studied the anti-cancer effects of statins contributing to the TGF-B and BMP families of SMAD cascades resulting in caspase-mediated apoptosis. I added to the understanding of the lab through the use of immunohistochemistry (IHC) of fresh and FFPE samples, immunofluorescence microscopy, aseptic/sterile colon-cancer cell line culture, Western blot, and qRT-PCR analysis of high-quality RNA samples.

My extent of cancer familiarity includes many canonical molecular signal transduction pathways, the molecular mechanisms of activation, protein networks, and Illumina RNA-seq and miRNA-seq on hg19 and hg38 transcriptomes.

Pharmaceutical industry

While in the pharmaceutical industry, I contributed to a variety of disease areas and research topics including RNA-seq, sequencer automation, target discovery, siRNA off-target thermodynamics analysis, ligand preparation and molecular dynamics simulation data pipelines.

Specifically, I used computational tools and molecular biology knowledgebases to generate leads in a discovery research environment. While there, I contributed to reproducibility research initiatives, and received and award for fast turnaround time regarding a reproducibility frameworks for scientists to use to ensure that calculations and datasets were logged and versioned for accuracy and reprodubility during one of the “checkmate” trials at Bristol-Myers Squibb.