this is yutaro's github. (pronounced "yuu-tar-roe")

tl;dr - yutaro tanaka is a computational biologist at dana-farber cancer institute interested in computationally studying pediatric cancer and other rare diseases. he graduated from columbia engineering, where he studied + did research in applied math/biomedical informatics. he also does other, non-coding things sometimes.

• i am currently based in boston 🇺🇸 / tokyo 🇯🇵
• i currently work at the dana-farber cancer institute, department of pediatric oncology (+ broad institute, cancer program) with drs. riaz gillani, eliezer van allen, and katie janeway.
  • we study the biological mechanisms and therapeutic vulnerabilities of pediatric solid tumors by applying computational biology methods to different kinds of "omics" (eg. genomics, transcriptomics, epigenomics) data.
  • we aim to hopefully better understand why and how these cancers arise, develop, and metastasize (travel and plant themselves in different parts of the body), to provide insight into how we might be able to treat and cure them.
• i graduated from columbia engineering in may 2023 majoring in applied mathematics (with a focus on quantitative biology) and minors in biomedical engineering and philosophy.
  • i was incredibly fortunate to have the opportunity to do research in the tatonetti lab working on understanding and building databases for adverse drug events and pharmacogenomics using population genomics, data science, and natural language processing.
  • i am also extremely greatful to have had the opportunity to work at the zhao lab (the rockefeller university), sumikura lab (the national graduate institute of policy studies), utec, forest inc., lily medtech, and micin through various research internships. i gained diverse experience tackling computational problems, contributing to quantitative academic research and strategic industry efforts, founding/leading data science teams, and mentoring/supervising others.
• before my undergraduate studies, i grew up in japan (osaka and nara), and england (cambridge and leeds).

• my current research interests are the development and application of computational/statistical methods and resources to contribute to the understanding of biological mechanisms and discovery of therapeutic targets in pediatric and rare diseases
  • more broadly, i'm interested in the questions that involve some intersection of
    • applying computational biology / biomedical informatics / data science / population genetics methods
    • developing machine-friendly / large-scale / broadly representative data resources
    • studying pediatric cancers / rare diseases / precision pharmacology / underrepresented populations in biomedicine domains
• my recent work (that has been somewhat polished) is available on google scholar or orcid. more (hopefully) coming soon!
• i can be most easily reached at yutaro_tanaka [at] dfci.harvard.edu .
• happy to collaborate, talk anything and everything computational biology and data science! (i am also happy to talk wet-lab, but am a lot less well versed in experimental science)

• when i'm not on vscode/stack overflow/chatgpt, i can usually be found

  • triathlon-ing 🚴 🏊 🏃
  • lounging 🀄 😴
  • watching ⚽ ⚾
  • reading 📚

• i care greatly about improving equity in access to educational opportunities, and have tried to use my free time to contribute to efforts to achieve this in different contexts.

  • co-founding atelier basi, a non-profit, free college-prep program to assist more high school students from across japan access higher education opportunities across the globe.
    • the program has mentored ~90 students across japan over the past 4 years, many of whom went to high schools that had never sent a student to a college / university overseas, and lacked any college counseling resources. the organization has helped them matriculate at schools across the world, including highly selective institutions, and they have been awarded millions in private and school scholarships + financial aid.
    • i'm so proud of the successes our mentees have already achieved in their studies+personal+professional lives, and hearing how exposure to new environments have allowed them to flourish.
    • i'm especially proud of the fact that the majority of them have returned to the organization as volunteers to pay it forward to the next generation of students.
  • volunteering through musical mentors to teach violin and piano to local elementary students in new york.
  • volunteering through project tutors to assist teachers at a elementary school in new york
  • i am always eager to contribute to all kinds of efforts, please reach out if you have anything i may be a good fit for!

• (if you haven't noticed already) i try to not use uppercase letters unless i really have to. i think they make things look too serious. silly is better than serious.