Pooja Thorali

While interning in the Gibbons Lab, Pooja was a junior at the University of Washington, pursuing a B.A. in Biochemistry and a B.S. in Biomedical & Health Informatics, with a minor in Bioethics. During the school year, Pooja worked at the UW Medicine Research Institute in Dr. Ojo’s lab to develop novel antimicrobial agents that can withstand the threat of resistance. She was also involved in Phi Delta Epsilon (a pre-medical fraternity at the UW), was a mentor for underserved students, and was an editor for the UW Neuroscience Club’s journal Grey Matters.

During her internship at ISB, Pooja used metabolic modeling techniques to develop patient-specific predictive models. Specifically, she built a workflow to predict microbe-host co-production of trimethylamine N-oxide (TMAO) on a given dietary input. TMAO is a risk factor for heart disease; the goal was to ultimately identify dietary interventions aimed at reducing circulating levels of TMAO. Pooja hopes to attend medical school and to explore the intersection between medicine and data science.