PIYAKRIT WONGBOONCHAI

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piyakrit_w at protonmail.com

RESEARCH EXPERIENCE

Ministry of Public Health, Thailand (2024 - Present)
Research Intern at the Department of Medical Sciences

• Contributed to Genomics Thailand (GeTH), an extensive collaborative research network to enable precision medicine.
• Worked on GeTH projects to integrate genomic medicine to clinical services by developing a digital database for diseases and characterising pharmacogenes:
  • Ran genome-wide association studies (GWAS) to explore genetic variants linked with drug-induced severe cutaneous adverse reactions (SCARs) and adverse events following immunisation (AEFI).
  • Performed Mycobacterium tuberculosis structural variation (SV) analysis using multiple SV callers (IMSindel, Manta) and GATK 4 for single nucleotide variation (SNV) calling.
  • Collaborated with medical scientists and curated BRCA1/2 variants based on guidelines provided by the American College of Medical Genetics (ACMG, 2018) to construct a database for Thai breast cancer variants.
  • Developed and deployed pipelines to Amazon Web Services (AWS) for scaling up demanding computational tasks, such as large GWAS analyses (>1,000 samples and >900,000 SNPs).
    

University of York, UK (2023)

• Utilised precision gene editing to characterise a putative RNA:DNA helicase in Leishmania mexicana.
• Employed bioinformatic tools (HMMER and AlphaFold2) to infer protein structural properties.
  

University of Bristol, UK (2022)

• Applied image segmentation and classification methods for tracking individual human pluripotent stem cells to map differentiation pathways.
• Extracted biological features to predict differentiation characteristics, such as differentiation marker expression, cell cycle length, cell migration distance and cell velocity.
  

Ministry of Public Health, Thailand (2021)

• Conducted genomic analysis of SARS-CoV-2, focusing on the Spike and Nucleocapsid proteins, to monitor viral evolution in Thailand.

TECHNICAL SKILLS

Bioinformatics:

• Programming languages - Python, R, Unix
• Cloud & Virtual Machine (VM) computing
• GWAS, Variant interpretation, Phylogenetic inference
  

Experimental techniques:

• PCR, CRISPR/Cas9, DNA extraction
• Western blot, Co-immunoprecipitation
• Cell imaging (Widefield & Confocal)
  

EDUCATION

University of York, UK (2022 - 2023)

Master of Science (MSc) in Biomedical Sciences

• Activities: Biodiversity Community Project

University of Bristol, UK (2019 - 2022)

Bachelor of Science (BSc Hons) in Biomedical Sciences

Gjøvik High School, Norway (2017 - 2019)

International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme (IBDP)

• Main subjects: Biology, Chemistry, English Language & Literature
• Extended Essay: Investigating Seasonal Effects on Cyanobacterial Growth in Norwegian Lakes

CONFERENCES & WORKSHOPS

Infectious Diseases Omics - 17 - 20 March 2025, hands-on multi-omics course hosted by the London School Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

• Techniques range from: phylogenetics and molecular clocking, transcriptomics, machine learning.

AWS Genomics Community Day - 3 – 4 March 2025, workshop hosted by Amazon Web Services (AWS)

• Explored cloud-based genomics workflows with AWS HealthOmics.

MedHackathon Asia 2025 - Workshop hosted by MedHackathon Asia, 2025

• Participated in the planning of a standardised Pan-Asian imputation pipeline to improve precision medicine across Asia.
• Collaborated with data scientists to solve a hackathon problem.
• Developed an awareness for common issues among Asian countries regarding sharing genomic data.

AI in Genomics Medicine - Seminar hosted by British Embassy Bangkok with guest speakers from Genomics England and Incubator for AI (ai.gov.uk), 2025

• Explored the successes and challenges, both technical and policy-based, for AI applications in British healthcare and research.

PROFESSIONAL MEMBERSHIPS

Thai Society of Human Genetics, 2024 - present

AWARDS

Thai Society of Human Genetics travel grant for MedHackathon Asia, 2025

CERTIFICATES

Infectious Diseases Omics - London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine
Intermediate Machine Learning - Kaggle
Data Science for Everyone - FutureSkill

HOBBIES & INTERESTS

• Gardening & DIY
• Rifle shooting - previously part of a local shooting team in Norway, participated in regional competitions. Learned about the importance of gun safety and control.
• Cross-country skiing

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