Biography:
Dr. Siba Shanak is an assistant professor at the Arab American University/Palestine (AAUP), since 2015. She has finished her PhD at Saarland University/Germany in the field of Bioinformatics. For the past few years, she’s been working on biomolecular interactions and in data analysis in Next Generation Sequencing (NGS). One of the research interests she focused on is the mechanistic insights of epigenetic modifications via modeling Protein:DNA interactions.
In the field of NGS data analysis, Dr. Siba Shanak is currently analyzing the correlation of expression and epigenetic modifications at the exon level. She also explores the field of combinatorial histone allocation at the exon level. She conducts the analysis in adult, fetal, and cultured embryonic cells of human. To this aim, she investigates bed files for RNA-Seq, Methyl-Seq and Chip-Seq data. She undertakes the statistical analysis using Linux scripting tools and R statistical language. In essence, she is working on several packages provided via Bioconductor, which is based primarily on R platform. Additionally, she has explored gene mapping and differential gene and transcript expression analysis using tools such as Bowtie, Tophat and Cufflinks.
Education and Credentials:
• PhD in Bioinformatics (magna cum laude) at the Saarland University, Saarbrücken, Germany, January, 2015.
• M.Sc. in Computational Molecular Biology/ Bioinformatics (Honor’s degree), Saarland University, Saarbruecken, Germany, 2009.
• B.Sc. in Biology and Biotechnology (Honor’s degree), Arab American University, Jenin, Palestine, 2006. GPA: 3.99, with an ‘excellent’ standing.
• Secondary School Leaving Certificate (Tawjihi) – Average: 97.1%
Skills:
Linux scripting, html scripting and parsing, xml, etc.
Different programming languages, including C++, R statistical language, and Python.
Scholarship for a B.Sc. Program in AAUJ by the Palestinian Ministry of Higher Education, 09/2003- 06/2006.
Zamalah fellowship for a scientific research visit 06/2017-08/2017, Germany.
Internal funding for scientific research, AAUJ, 2016.
Awards:
Scholarship for a PhD Program in Germany by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD, Deutscher Akademischer Austausch Dienst), 08/2012 – 01/2015.
Scholarship for an M.Sc. Program in Germany by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD, Deutscher Akademischer Austausch Dienst), 03/2008 - 09/2009.
Zamalah fellowship for a scientific research visit 06/2017-08/2017, Germany.
Scholarship for a B.Sc. Program in AAUJ by the Palestinian Ministry of Higher Education, 09/2003- 06/2006.
PALGER Fellowship for Scientific Research