Srikar Chamala, Ph.D.

Srikar Chamala, Ph.D., is the Director of Biomedical Informatics and Assistant Professor who leads the bioinformatics, genomics, and pathology informatics efforts at the University of Florida Department of Pathology, Immunology and Laboratory Medicine. Dr. Chamala’s research applies bioinformatics and genomics to investigate the genetic basis for human cancers and type 1 diabetes. Additionally, his work involves machine learning and other data analytic techniques to discover and improve clinical outcomes and diagnosis. Dr. Chamala has successfully collaborated and organized multiple international and inter-institutional projects focusing on global health disparities.

In addition to research, Dr. Chamala leads clinical bioinformatics and pathology informatics efforts at UF Health Pathology Laboratories in developing clinical genomic or precision medicine tests (in cancer, germline, and pharmacogenomics), clinical bioinformatics data analysis & management workflows, clinical genomic variant data interpretation, solutions for integrating genomic data into health information systems, pathology analytics and quality assurance (e.g., CAP Cancer Reporting Protocols).

Complementing clinical and basic research efforts, Dr. Chamala has been actively involved in teaching informatics courses – creating and implementing an Informatics for Pathology Practice and Research course series at the University of Florida. The goal of this course series is to build informatics skills among pathology students, residents, fellows, staff, and faculty in both clinical and experimental divisions.

Precision Medicine Informatics: Dr. Chamala is leading clinical bioinformatics efforts at UF Health Pathology Laboratories in developing custom genotyping and next-generation sequencing (NGS) clinical assays, bioinformatics data analysis & management workflows, and solutions for integrating genomic data into lab information systems (LIS) and electronic health records (EHR). Our precision medicine assays include detection of SNVs, Translocations, CNVs, and MSIs in clinical oncology and pharmacogenomics tests. We have developed and currently adding new functionalities to our in-house web application called “DNAVault”, which holds and retrieve genomic variant data from UF Health precision oncology care. DNAVault is currently being used for clinical quality control by our molecular pathologists and clinical staff, but have future plans to expand for research purposes after appropriate consenting and de-identification of the data.

Pathology Informatics: Dr. Chamala provides informatics leadership in development and optimization of informatics processes and workflows at UF Health Pathology Laboratories. These workflows involving interaction between laboratory instrumentation, lab information systems (LIS), and electronic health records (EHR). We are creating centralized interactive dashboards and data investigation and analytics tools which consolidate data from various UF Health data sources like EPIC (EHR), EPIC Beaker (LIS), and others.

In the area of Bioinformatics and Genomics, Dr. Chamala has made several original contributions in the areas of alternative splicing, comparative genomics, genome sequencing and annotation, genome evolution, genetic marker development, and genetic variant calling. The current focus of his research is in global health equity, specifically understanding the genetic basis for human cancers using genomics technologies. At the same time, Dr. Chamala is pursuing the application of machine learning and other data analytic techniques to discover and improve clinical outcomes and diagnosis using clinical, pathological, and digital imaging datasets. Currently at University of Florida (UF), Dr. Chamala leads informatics efforts in type 1 diabetes (PO1 Award # AI042288), and NCI-supported grants, Florida-California CaRE2 Health Equity Center (U54 Award # CA233444) and NCI-EGRP supported Prostate Cancer Transatlantic Consortium (CaPTC) (http://epi.grants.cancer.gov/captc/).