Profile
F. Alex Feltus
Genetics and Biochemistry
Professor
Core Faculty, Biomedical Data Science and Informatics
Faculty Member, Clemson Center for Human Genetics
864-656-3231
Educational Background
Ph.D., Cell Biology, Vanderbilt University, 2000
B.Sc., Biohemistry, Auburn University, 1992
Profile/About Me
Dr. F. Alex Feltus received a B.Sc. in Biochemistry from Auburn University, served two years in the Peace Corps in the Fiji Islands, and then completed advanced biomedical training at Vanderbilt (PhD) and Emory (post-doc). He has performed research in artificial intelligence, bioinformatics, cyberinfrastructure, high-performance & cloud computing, systems biology, tumor genomics, medical genetics, crop genetics, genome assembly, systems genetics, and paleogenomics. Feltus has published numerous scientific articles in peer-reviewed journals, released open source software, completed multiple NSF grants, and trained BS, MS and PhD students and faculty in bioinformatics, biochemistry, and genetics. Currently, Feltus is Professor in Clemson University’s Dept. of Genetics & Biochemistry and co-founder of Praxis AI LLC. Through Praxis AI, Feltus is extending 27 years of bioscience research experience to scale computational biology skilling to thousands of learners via deep-dive experiential training: virtual courses with digital badging, biohackathons, podcasts, and facilitating digital learning solutions worldwide.
“I want to build and train 21st century interdisciplinary communities of humans with diverse perspectives and technical backgrounds, provide them with democratized data intensive computing access, and teach them how to use these systems with an eye on the scientific method. A core goal is for these folks to land meaningful, well-paid jobs to ensure a wonderful life.”
Research Interests
Our group uses software engineering and computational biology techniques to make useful molecular discoveries in human and plant biological systems; We also engineer elastic advanced compute systems and technologies to run robust genomics workflows to enable small labs to perform innovative petascale computational biology. The lab also actively engaged in traditional PhD training and the development of a scalable asynchronous training platform for data-intensive computing including but not limited to computational biology.
My lifetime research goal is to reveal the genomic mechanisms underlying phenotype expression. A core aspect of this approach to identify biomarkers that are able to group interesting biological states (e.g. normal kidney verses renal tumor somatic mutation and/or transcriptome profiles). Given that most traits are under control by complex cellular control systems, we always seek to identify sets of functionally interacting genes (biomarker systems) that discriminate between biological states. My group focuses on the transcriptome layer (RNA) of gene expression but we are always seeking methods to integrate data from other genome information orbitals.
into information centric network systems.
Courses Taught
Bioinformatics
Medical Bioinformatics
Advanced Medical Bioinformatics
Digital Biology
Computational Genomics
Biomedical Informatics
Next-Generation Sequence Analysis
Special Topics in Advanced Biochemistry and Genetics (Network and Systems Genetics)
Essential Elements of Biochemistry
Issues in Research
Senior Seminar
Perl for Bioinformatics
Selected Publications
For a current list of publications, please visit Google Scholar at
https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=8ZgERJIAAAAJ&view_op=list_works&sortby=pubdate
Links
LinkedIn
Google Scholar
Genetics & Biochemistry Department
Biomedical Data Science & Informatics Program
