I'm Shaurita D. Hutchins, a computational biologist and PhD candidate in Genetics, Genomics, and Bioinformatics at UAB.

I build systems that help people make sense of biology.

My work spans computational biology, research software, knowledge systems, education, and advocacy. I design tools, workflows, and frameworks that help scientists and communities organize, interpret, apply, and reuse complex biological information.

I build these systems with diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility in mind, seeking to expand who can participate in, understand, and benefit from science.

My research currently focuses on genetic modifiers and regulatory networks in rare diseases, particularly heritable pulmonary arterial hypertension.

• Pronouns: she/her/hers
• Open Source: Cofounder of Datasnakes and Founder of BioWrappers
• Interested In Collaborating On:
  • Scientific tools for evidence integration, hypothesis generation, and biological reasoning
  • Open-source research software and infrastructure
  • Projects that expand access to computational biology and support diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility in STEM
  • View my collaboration repo
• Topics I Love Discussing:
  • Rare disease and systems biology
  • Biological knowledge systems
  • Research software and reproducibility
  • Systems thinking and how we structure scientific reasoning

My work spans four interconnected areas, from building computational systems to supporting research, learning, and community advocacy.

• Computational Systems

  • Open OnDemand HPC Dashboard · an interface for software discovery, cluster resources, environments, and common HPC workflows
  • Harmonizome · Python tooling for accessing the Harmonizome API
  • labrat · tools for reproducible scientific computing, project organization, and common research tasks

• Research & Knowledge Systems

  • ME/CFS Cohort Analysis · reproducible genomic, transcriptomic, and phenotypic analyses supporting a published ME/CFS cohort study
  • MicrobiomeR · open-source R tooling for microbiome analysis and visualization, published in the Journal of Open Source Software

• Learning Systems

  • PhD Research Template · a framework for organizing hypotheses, evidence, decisions, methods, and interpretation across a research project
  • Workshop Cheatsheet · a reusable template for creating concise technical workshop reference materials
  • Publication-Quality Graphics with ggplot2 · teaching materials developed for a Software Carpentry workshop

• Community Systems

  • SNAP Coalition · organizing member contributing technical infrastructure and content for science advocacy and civic engagement
  • Biohackathons · maintain and improve a community resource for discovering and connecting scientific hackathons
  • UAB Informatics Club · developed and maintain the club website, event infrastructure, technical resources, and teaching materials

Through Datasnakes and BioWrappers, I develop and maintain reusable scientific software and infrastructure, including workflow tooling, biological data interfaces, testing, documentation, packaging, and long-term software modernization.

I also contribute across the open-source scientific software ecosystem, including OpenOmics, biothings_client.py, awesome-rshiny, grateful, and edgePy.

Explore some of my open-source Shiny and Streamlit apps.