About
Welcome to my personal website! I am Dr. Dattatray Mongad, a Bioinformatics specialist with a passion for unraveling the complexities of microbiomes and multi-omics data. Currently, I work as a Postdoctoral Researcher at University of Turku, Finland (Turku Data Science Group). I hold a Ph.D. in Biotechnology from the National Centre for Cell Science, Pune, where I developed MicFunPred, a tool for functional prediction based on amplicon data. With expertise in Next-Generation Sequencing, machine learning, and bioinformatics workflow development, I’ve contributed to research in diverse areas such as infant microbiomes, mental health, and type 2 diabetes.
Education
Ph.D. in Biotechnology (August 2017 - October 2023)
National Centre for Cell Science, Pune, India.
M.Sc. in Bioinformatics (2015 - 2017)
Bioinformatics Centre, SPPU, Pune.
B.Sc. in Biotechnology (2012 - 2015)
Fergusson College, Pune
Experience
Postdoctoral Researcher (August 2024 - Present)
University of Turku, Finland
Lead Domain Engineer (Nov 2023 - June 2024)
Persistent Systems Limited, Pune, India
Visiting Scholar (March 2022 - August 2022)
University of Turku, Finland
Functional Bioinformatics Contractor (April 2022 - June 2022)
Digbi Health, Remote
Skills
Programming
R
Shiny
Python
Workflow
- Snakemake and Conda
OS
- Linux and Windows
Data analysis
NGS (Genome, amplicon, metagenome, transcriptome, CHiP-Seq)
Statistics
GenAI: API, Topic modelling
Achievements
Awards
DBT-BINC fellowship for Ph.D.(Aug 2017 – July 2022)
Best poster “Probiotic prediction using machine learning”, International Yakult Symposium, 2019, India
DBT scholarship (top 15 students), M.Sc. Bioinformatics (June 2015 – May 2017)
Workshops
- Statistical Methods in Microbiome Research, 2019, NCCS, Pune.
Conferences
International Conference on Microbiome Research, 2018, Pune, India
Presented “MicFunPred” at InBix2021, Remote
Showcased “MicFunPred” at Microbiome Data Congress, 2022, Remote
ISME 18, Lausanne, Switzerland
Teaching
“Viral Genomics and Bioinformatics (Asia), COG-Train” as trainer and conducted a 1 day hands-on on viral metagenomics, 22nd - 26th August, 2022
Delivered lectures on “Bioinformatics, biological databases, protein structure & analysis, and Next Generation Sequencing” at Fergusson College under the DBT STRIDE program, 25th - 29th July, 2022.
Conducted “Bioinformatics course” at MITCON, Pune, 29th November - 12th December 2021
Delivered a lecture on “Molecular Phylogeny: Decrypting relations and time” at Fergusson College, Pune, on 17th May 2021.