Jim Shaw

Hi there! I am an NSERC Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard Medical School and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. I work with Heng Li. You can reach me at jshaw(at)ds.dfci.harvard.edu.

I obtained my PhD in Math at the University of Toronto, where I was advised by Yun William Yu. Previously, I studied Engineering Physics + Mathematics at the University of British Columbia.

Research interests

I develop algorithms/software/theory for biological sequence analysis and apply these methods to investigate important problems in microbial and microbiome genomics.

More specifically, two intertwined themes define my current work:

1. Building sophisticated bioinformatics tools to improve the analysis of massive microbial and meta-omics data.
2. Obtaining new insights about microbiome genome evolution through principled analytical methods.

For example, see my work on ultrafast microbial divergence computation, rapid metagenome profiling, and long-read metagenome assembly. When I have the chance, I also enjoy doing a bit of theory.