Micah Manary

Micah Manary is a dual doctorate (MD/PhD) student at the University of California, San Diego. Born in Saint Louis, Missouri, his drive to cure infectious diseases stems from a childhood growing up in sub-Saharan Africa. After completing college at the California Institute of Technology, Micah went straight into graduate school. Currently at the beginning of his graduate career, Micah is a member of Elizabeth Winzeler’s laboratory at UCSD, where he studies pathogen genomics. Already, he has developed a novel algorithm for detecting copy number variants in pathogen whole genome sequencing data, and used it to identify a novel locus of drug resistance in Plasmodium falciparum. This algorithm was developed based not on the current biological methods but using a completely novel method that was borrowed from a seemingly unrelated field—digital signal processing. Micah recognized the similarity between whole genome sequence data and cell phone signal interpretation, and used this connection to expand our insight into gene duplications and deletions. However, not content to be stuck at the computer, Micah seeks out fieldwork opportunities, so that his extensive computational knowledge can be used to directly impact the treatment of patients around the world. Micah hopes to continue his computational research after graduate school, hopefully in an organization such as the Centers for Disease Control, United States Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases, or at a similar private research institution.