Hi everyone! I'm Mariam Isayan from Armenia

Introductions
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Hi everyone!

I’m Mariam Isayan, a neurologist and GP2 trainee based in Yerevan, Armenia ( :armenia: GMT+4). My research is focused on Parkinson’s disease genetics in underrepresented populations in Central Asia and Transcaucasia. I work in a specialized clinic for Parkinson’s disease (PD) and other movement disorders – the only tertiary center for PD in Armenia.

Throughout my studies in medical school, I have always been thinking about somehow integrating data science in my practice. A few years ago I was introduced to the GP2 and it clicked! :sparkles:

I got really passionate about bioinformatics in PD and dedicated most of my time to learning programming languages, implementing bioinformatics tools, reading lots of literature to analyze the data we have been collecting from our region.

As I was looking for formal education in bioinformatics, and I was super excited to get into the GP2 funded MPS in Data Science program at UMBC. I’ve just completed the first year of my studies, and this was an amazing experience: it’s so inspiring to dynamically integrate the gained knowledge from classes into your daily work.

During the past several months I received an amazing support from Sara Bandres Ciga and everyone at CARD, NIA, NIH during the GP2 Sabbatical program. I got trained in handling genotyping and whole genome sequencing data, processing from raw formats, implementing tools and packages to perform GWAS and other analyses on the samples from Central Asian and Transcaucasian region. As the population is quite admixed in our region, we are aiming to explore this further by implementing local ancestry GWAS and exploring genomic variation in Parkinson’s disease across multiple ancestries in this region in the nearest future.

I’m glad to become a part of the Data Community of Practice. I have questions about analyses all the time, and this is a great opportunity to engage with researchers from the comfort of your own workplace by simply sharing a post or leaving a comment.

Looking forward to learning more about everybody! :blush:

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Hi Mariam, it’s great to have you and hear about your work!

I’m curious: are there researcher networks specifically in your region that you’ve found helpful for building collaborations or finding opportunities? Would love to know more about how we can connect with and learn from other collaborators in your part of the world!

Thanks for being a part of our community :slight_smile:

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Hey Josh! Happy to join the community! :slightly_smiling_face:

Thank you for your interest! In our region we have student, physician and researcher organizations, and they’re often supported by institutions like universities, labs and hospital clinics. We’re usually networking during local or regional courses and conferences, because this is the most convenient time for specialists to build new connections and share opportunities.

For example, we had a neuroscience conference in Armenia a couple of days ago, and I had a talk about PD genetics research and our progress so far. The head of a newly established bioinformatics department reached out during the break to share that they are currently working on the Armenian Reference Genome project, which is actually a big thing! Hopefully, once available, the Armenian reference panel could be used for genotype imputation, phasing, and ancestry inference in populations of Armenian descent.

So I guess the key to encourage collaboration is to organize a multidisciplinary meeting and link the educational sessions with networking opportunities :blush:

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So exciting about the panel! This makes a lot of sense, may reach out separately down the line to discuss networking opportunities but for now hope you’ll keep us in mind! :slight_smile:

Also wanted to flag our Networking and Outreach task force – we’re going to resume activities soon, and if this sounds like something of interest, hope you’ll join us!

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Thank you, Josh! Yes, absolutely, would love to join the activities at the Networking and Outreach task force :slightly_smiling_face:

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Awesome! Flagging for our Task Force leads @Vidash @ecebayram and @gginnan so we can be sure to include you going forward – good to have you abord :slight_smile: .

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Welcome aboard Mariam and I’m considering myself a newbie in this community too so you’re in good company! GP2 is such a great crew, I work with the NIH team for Lewy body dementia and know the CARD crew through that work. Sara’s really great. GP2 team is always active in the MDS community too, so our young members group steering committee is dominated by that team and they’re a pleasure to work with :smiley:

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Hi Ece! Nice to meet you, and thanks for the warm welcome! It’s great to hear about your work with the GP2, NIH and CARD. It’s inspiring to be part of a community where everyone is so engaged and supportive :slightly_smiling_face: