Mengyao Zhao, Ph.D.
About Mengyao Zhao, Ph.D.
Mengyao Zhao, Ph.D., serves as the Lead of the Software Algorithm Team and Manager at Pillar Biosciences Incorporated. With extensive experience in computational biology and bioinformatics, Zhao has contributed to significant advancements in algorithm optimization and software development across various esteemed institutions.
Current Role at Pillar Biosciences
Mengyao Zhao serves as the Lead of the Software Algorithm Team and Manager (Staff Computational Biologist) at Pillar Biosciences Incorporated. She has held this position since 2022 in Natick, Massachusetts. In her current role, she focuses on enhancing somatic Copy Number Variation (CNV) calling algorithms and developing the quality control system known as FUZZY. Her responsibilities include overseeing algorithm development and ensuring the quality and efficiency of software solutions.
Education and Academic Background
Mengyao Zhao completed her Bachelor of Science (BSc) in Computer Science at Beijing Normal University from 2000 to 2004. She furthered her education by obtaining a Master of Science (MSc) in Genomics and Pathway Biology from The University of Edinburgh in 2006-2007. Zhao earned her Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in Bioinformatics from Boston College, where she studied from 2009 to 2014. This academic background has equipped her with a strong foundation in computational biology and bioinformatics.
Professional Experience in Computational Biology
Mengyao Zhao has extensive experience in computational biology, having worked in various prominent organizations. She was a Computational Biologist at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute from 2007 to 2009. She then served as a Senior Research Scientist at Velsera from 2016 to 2017. Following that, she worked at Harvard Medical School as a Staff Scientist from 2014 to 2016. Zhao also held the position of Lead of the Bioinformatics Team at IDEXX from 2021 to 2022 and was a Computational Biologist at Foundation Medicine from 2018 to 2021.
Key Contributions and Achievements
Mengyao Zhao has made significant contributions to software development in computational biology. At IDEXX, she restructured the PiVAT system into separate applications for Secondary Analysis, Filtering, and Reporting, which improved the flexibility of pipeline usage. She optimized the variant calling pre-processing modules of PiVAT, achieving a 24-fold speed improvement and a 99.9% reduction in memory usage. Additionally, she maintained the Stripped Smith-Waterman (SSW) Library, which is significantly faster than traditional methods and has been utilized in major projects such as Illumina's Dragon.