Wagner Lab
The Wagner Lab works to improve the actionability and throughput of clinical variant interpretation. The team researches and develops methods, tools and standards for the exchange and application of biomedical evidence informing genomic variant interpretation.
Genomic medicine, the process of translating observed changes in patient DNA into actionable clinical findings, requires many hours of effort from variant scientists and clinical lab directors in the evaluation of each case. The majority of this time is spent on aggregating evidence relevant to observed variants and applying that evidence in the context of other medical observations about a patient. Methods are needed to streamline this process by collecting, identifying, and prioritizing the most relevant evidence given the clinical context for a patient.
To achieve these aims, the Wagner Lab coordinates with the interdisciplinary clinical and scientific expertise at the Steve and Cindy Rasmussen Institute for Genomic Medicine at Nationwide Children’s Hospital to target key areas for growth and application of the Institute’s clinical evidence databases. The lab team also collaborates with multiple international genomic knowledge sharing consortia to develop these methods, standards and tools. These consortia include the Clinical Genome Resource (ClinGen), the Global Alliance for Genomics and Health (GA4GH) and the Variant Interpretation for Cancer Consortium (VICC). Their collaboration with these groups helps them build and standardize impactful data sharing capabilities, multiplying the benefit of their applied research at the Institute for Genomic Medicine.
Meet Our Team
Alex Wagner, PhD
Principal Investigator
Alex.Wagner@NationwideChildrens.org
Alex Wagner, PhD, is a principal investigator in the Steve and Cindy Rasmussen Institute for Genomic Medicine at Nationwide Children’s Hospital where he leads the development of tools and standards for advancing precision medicine and our knowledge of genomic alterations in cancers. Dr. Wagner applies his research to drive rapid analysis of patient genomes, translating genetic alterations in children with cancers and other rare genetic disorders into clinical action. He is also a strong advocate for open science resources and initiatives.
Jeremy Arbesfeld
PhD Candidate
Jeremy.Arbesfeld@NationwideChildrens.org
Jeremy is a doctoral candidate in the Wagner Lab. He has worked to develop standards for representing Multiplexed Assays of Variant Effects (MAVE) data and his current research interests include applying standards for the representation of gene fusions and the interpretation of fusion oncogenicity. Jeremy received his bachelor's in biology from Tufts University.
Rohit Basu
Software Developer Intern
Rohit.Basu@NationwideChildrens.org
Rohit is a current high-school student working as a developer in Dr. Wagner's lab. He is working with the drug-gene interaction database (DGIdb), particularly in the development of a Python wrapper for DGIdb (DGIpy), as well as the development of an R wrapper for DGIdb (r-dgidb). He hopes to pursue an undergraduate major in the field of computational biology/biomedical science.
Jennifer Bowser
IGM Full Stack Web Developer Sr.
Jennifer.Bowser@NationwideChildrens.org
Jennifer Bowser graduated from Pepperdine University with a bachelor’s in biology, then went on to complete a bachelor’s in software development. She also holds a master’s in software development from Boston University. Jennifer is excited to combine her backgrounds in both biology and software engineering as a full-stack developer in the Wagner Lab, where she builds applications for genomic variant analysis.
Anastasia Bratulin
PhD Candidate
Anastasia Bratulin@NationwideChildrens.org
After graduating from the University of North Florida with a master's in biology, Anastasia began her doctorate training at the Biomedical Sciences Graduate Program at The Ohio State University in 2022. Some of her current projects in the lab include analyses on the variation and gene normalizer tools. She hopes to use her doctorate to help improve patient care through the standardization and harmonization of genomic data.
Matthew Cannon
Senior Bioinformatics Scientist
Matthew.Cannon2@NationwideChildrens.org
Matthew earned an undergraduate degree in biochemistry and a doctorate degree in biomedical sciences from The Ohio State University. He contributed to bioinformatics and experimental therapeutics-based research to screen FDA-approved drugs for new indications for acute myeloid leukemia (AML) and sickle cell disease (SCD). Matthew joined Dr. Wagner’s lab as a postdoctoral scientist to continue his bioinformatics training. Currently, Matthew serves as a senior bioinformatics scientist on the team and leads research on the development of the Drug-Gene Interaction Database (DGIdb) and MetaKB projects.
Kori Kuzma
Bioinformatics Software Developer Lead
Kori.Kuzma@NationwideChildrens.org
Kori graduated from The Ohio State University with a bachelor’s degree in computer science and engineering. She is the technical team lead and supervisor of the Wagner Lab developer group. Kori develops and deploys web applications for the analysis and interpretation of genomic variants. Her interests include backend development and AWS cloud computing.
Michael McCarrick
IGM Full Stack Web Developer Sr.
Michael.Mccarrick@NationwideChildrens.org
Michael joined the Wagner Lab as a full-stack developer to develop web applications for variant analysis. He graduated from The Ohio State University with a dual degree in computer science and physics engineering. His Interests include general computer science and rendering.
Daniel Puthawala
Postdoctoral Scientist
Daniel.Puthawala@NationwideChildrens.org
Daniel Puthawala, PhD, does formal modeling and schema development for the Wagner Lab to help develop tools and standards for advancing genomics research and clinical analysis pipelines. A Linguist by training, Dr. Puthawala earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in linguistics from Binghamton University and the University of Chicago. He completed his doctorate at The Ohio State University by exploiting mathematical, experimental, and computational methods to study the memory and cognitive mechanisms that determine how humans process ellipses: when words or phrases are missing from an utterance but it is nonetheless understood to express a full sentence. He joined the Wagner Lab as a postdoctoral scientist to lend his analytical techniques to problems in the genome, the language of life. Daniel currently leads research into and development of the Categorical Variation Representation Specification (Cat-VRS) for the Global Alliance for Genomics and Health (GA4GH) with the aim of alleviating the difficulties that categorical variation poses for genomic knowledge sharing, interpretation, and curation.
Krutin Shukla
Software Developer Intern
Krutin.Shukla@NationwideChildrens.org
Krutin is a senior at The Ohio State University, pursuing a bachelor’s degree in computer science with a focus on software development, and is expected to graduate in May 2025. As a software developer intern at Nationwide Children’s Hospital, Krutin is involved in building and deploying a web application tool that enhances the identification of cancer variants for clinical teams. Utilizing the React tech stack and AWS cloud computing, Krutin’s work aims to streamline clinical workflows, providing the clinical team with more efficient tools to ultimately improve patient outcomes.
Kathryn Stahl
Bioinformatics Software Developer II
Kathryn.Stahl@NationwideChildrens.org
Katie Stahl does full-stack development for the Wagner Lab, working with research staff to develop open-source bioinformatics applications for efficient data analysis and visualization. Katie received her degree in computer science with a minor in mathematics from Capital University.
James Stevenson
Bioinformatics Software Developer II
James.Stevenson@NationwideChildrens.org
James provides engineering and development for the Wagner Lab’s software projects, including the MetaKB. He holds a bachelor’s degree in political science and philosophy from the University of Puget Sound and is completing a master’s degree in computer science from the Georgia Institute of Technology. His research interests include applications of machine learning techniques in clinical medicine.
Join the IGM Team
The team at the Institute for Genomic Medicine is growing. Click the link below to view current job listings and to learn more about careers at Nationwide Children's Hospital.
