PhD Candidate · Computational Biology

Jocelyn J. Garcia

I am a PhD candidate in Computer Science at Tufts University, advised by Professor Lenore J. Cowen. My research develops computational methods for understanding cancer pathways, genetic interactions, and biological networks from high-dimensional genomic data.

A hallmark of my work is the design theoretically robust algorithms that leverage elegant mathematical approaches to discover actionable biological insight.

NOTE: This page is still in development, so please excuse any filler text/misleading links and check again later!

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Research

A few themes that organize my work.

Cancer pathway discovery

I study how recurrent alterations across tumors reveal pathways, modules, and biological processes involved in cancer progression.

Cancer genomics Driver pathways

Genetic interactions

I am interested in synthetic lethality, mutual exclusivity, and context-specific dependencies that suggest therapeutic vulnerabilities.

CRISPR screens Epistasis

Algorithm design for biology

I design algorithms that combine genomic features, biological networks, and interpretable representations for prediction and discovery.

Deep learning Networks

Publications

Selected papers and preprints.

A Novel ILP Framework to Identify Compensatory Pathways in Genetic Interaction Networks with GIDEON

Jocelyn J. Garcia, Kevin Yu, Catherine Freudenreich, Lenore Cowen

bioRxiv preprint, 2026

Preprint Code BibTeX

GCAD: A Computational Framework for Mammalian Genetic Program Computer-Aided Design

Kathleen S. Dreyer, Anh V. Nguyen, Gauri G. Bora, Lauren E. Redus, Hailey I. Edelstein, Jocelyn J. Garcia, Eleftheria Anastasia, Kate E. Dray, Joshua N. Leonard, Niall M. Mangan

ACS Synthetic Biology, 2026

Paper Code BibTeX

A Computational Solution to the Game of Cycles

Jocelyn J. Garcia, Mike Janssen, Eliza Kautz

Involve, a Journal of Mathematics, 2025

Paper BibTeX

Research talks & posters

Invited talks, conference presentations, and posters.

Talk title about your dissertation project

Department Seminar, [University], March 2026

Slides Video

Poster title about genetic interactions

NCI Spring School on Algorithmic Cancer Biology, NIH Bethesda Campus, 2025

Lightning talk on machine learning for genomics

Workshop Name, 2024

Slides

Teaching & mentoring

Courses, TA work, and student mentoring.

Teaching

Graduate TA, Intro to Machine Learning, Fall 2024

Graduate TA, Algorithms, Spring 2025

Graduate TA, Discrete Mathematics, Summer 2025, Fall 2025

Guest lecture, Computational Biology (Tufts), Spring 2026

Mentoring & service

Mentor for undergraduate research students in Cowen Lab (Nahuel Gomez Ruiz, Sylvia Tseng, Amelie Hopke, David Yee).

Reviewer for European Conference on Computational Biology (ECCB).

Contact

Get in touch.

I am always happy to talk about computational biology, cancer genomics, network methods, graduate school, or potential collaborations.

Email: jocelyn.garcia@tufts.edu

Office: Joyce Cummings Center, Tufts University

Links: GitHub · Google Scholar · LinkedIn