Who are you and how did you choose the bioinformatics path?
I am a postdoctoral researcher in the Laboratory of Glia Biology at the VIB-KU Leuven Center for Brain and Disease Research (Belgium). After finishing my B.Sc. in the Faculty of Physics at Yerevan State University (Armenia) and M.Sc. in Applied Physics at Cergy-Pontoise University (France), I became interested in the application of Statistical Physics to Biology and chose Computational Biology as my future research direction, receiving my Ph.D. from the Sapienza University of Rome (Italy) shortly after. When Dr. Martirosyan joined the VIB-KU Leuven Laboratory of Glia Biology, I was amongst the first to describe unique astrocyte subtypes in the brain.
Learn more about Dr. Martirosyan’s research interests and access her publications on our website.
What do you do at ABI?
Now, I supervise ABI student Arabo Apresyan on his research on developmental neuroscience and single-cell transcriptomics as a part of ABI Research School. From the project we do with Arabo I expect to learn how cell types develop in the brain and how this process is altered after traumatic brain injury. I hope we can publish our work this year.
Why is bioinformatics important?
Bioinformatics is a rapidly developing field nowadays and interferes with many aspects of life sciences. It’s accelerating biomedical research at an amazing pace. If Armenia wants to be a part of that head-spinning acceleration, innovative science, if Armenia wants to be in the front line of life science, the development of Bioinformatics is a must.