Christopher M. Taylor
Assistant Professor
Department of Computer Science
University of New Orleans
2000 Lakeshore Dr
New Orleans, LA 70148

CERM 217 (Office Location)
504.280.2408 (Office Phone)
504.280.7228 (Fax)
[mylastname] at cs.uno.edu
 Research Institute for Children
Children's Hospital
200 Henry Clay Ave
New Orleans, LA 70118

R&E 2217 (Office Location)
504.896.2184 (Office Phone)
504.894.5379 (Fax)
c[mylastname] at chnola-research.org
Biography Research Publications Students Courses Personal CV

Brief Biography

      Dr. Christopher Taylor joined the Department of Computer Science at the University of New Orleans (UNO) as an assistant professor in August 2008. He is also affiliated with the Research Institute for Children, part of the Children's Hospital of New Orleans where his research activities are supported. He earned his Ph.D. and M.S. degrees in Computer Science from the University of Virginia. He graduated with honors from Mary Washington College (now known as University of Mary Washington) with a B.S. in Computer Science and Mathematics. He actively collaborates with biological researchers on the development of algorithms and analysis tools for high-throughput sequencing technologies. He is an Editorial Board Member of International Journal of Biometrics and Bioinformatics (IJBB) and a reviewer for several other well known journals such as PLoS ONE and Bioinformatics. He is a faculty mentor to our ACM Student Chapter and the coach of UNO's ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest Team.

Research

        Viamics: Visual and statistical analysis framework for microbial communities

      My group is developing algorithms and tools for analysis of microbial community sequencing data in the context of the human microbiome. The analysis of the microbiome uses high-throughput sequencing to assay the composition of the bacteria living within and upon a host organism. Changes in this population have implications in general human health and disease and the analysis of this diverse microbiota presents unique computational challenges. The system we are developing allows for visualization and manipulation of sequencing results as well as hypothesis testing. The system is very flexible and integrates diversity analysis, rarefaction curves, relative abundance pie charts, dendrograms, dot plots, and other important measures of community differences into a graphical framework that is easy to use for biological researchers with little technical training.

        RNA CoMPASS: RNA Comprehensive Multi-Processor Analysis System for Sequencing

      My group is also developing algorithms and analysis tools for RNA-Sequencing. RNA-Sequencing involves the application of high-throughput sequencing to investigate the RNA present in a given sample. This provides biologists with a way to study the impact of various factors on the transcriptome but poses a variety of computational challenges including dealing with splice junctions when mapping back to the reference genome. We have merged the functionality of the PARSES system described below with this work on RNA-Sequencing to create a Comprehensive Multi-Processor Analysis System for Sequencing which we call RNA CoMPASS. This new system provides all-in-one functionality including the typical endogenous RNA-Sequencing analysis along with the investigation of exogenous sequences pioneered in PARSES. RNA CoMPASS is deployable on either a local cluster or a grid environment managed by PBS submission to accelerate the analysis of large sequencing studies.

        PARSES: Pipeline for Analysis of RNA-Sequencing Exogenous Sequences

      We developed PARSES to allow researchers to uncover and investigate sequences in their samples arising from organisms other than the host. This is a relatively understudied area of RNA-Sequence analysis as most researchers focus only on the sequences that map back to the host genome and discard any non-mapping reads. The PARSES system focuses instead on these reads which do not map to the host genome and performs an extensive analysis of these sequences to investigate their origin. The PARSES ssytem was designed to provide for an easy, automated installation and updating of existing system components as necessary.

Recent Publications

Refereed Journal Articles: Refereed Conference Papers: Invited Book Chapter:

Students

Current Students: Former Students:

Courses

Spring 2012:   CSCI 1583 - Software Design and Development I
Spring 2012:   CSCI 4401[G] - Principles of Operating Systems I
    Fall 2011:   CSCI 1583 - Software Design and Development I
    Fall 2011:   CSCI 2120 - Software Design and Development II
Spring 2011:   CSCI 2120 - Software Design and Development II
Spring 2011:   CSCI 4401[G] - Principles of Operating Systems I
    Fall 2010:   CSCI 1583 - Software Design and Development I
    Fall 2010:   CSCI 4401[G] - Principles of Operating Systems I
Spring 2010:   CSCI 4401[G] - Principles of Operating Systems I
    Fall 2009:   CSCI 1583 - Software Design and Development I
    Fall 2009:   CSCI 4401[G] - Principles of Operating Systems I
Spring 2009:   CSCI 4401[G] - Principles of Operating Systems I
    Fall 2008:   CSCI 4401[G] - Principles of Operating Systems I

Personal

      I enjoy teaching, advising, solving problems, and writing code which is why I've chosen an academic position over several opportunities to work in industry. The biotechnology sector is at a very exciting stage of development and I look forward to forging collaborations with some of the researchers and companies which are currently pushing the envelope of personal health care diagnostics and new sequencing technologies.