Joana L. Rocha
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joanocha.bsky.social
Joana L. Rocha
@joanocha.bsky.social
incoming Assistant Professor and Principal Investigator at NYU Biology | currently postdoc at UC Berkeley | proud Sudmant lab member | typos and views are my own & I can be wrong :)
https://joanocha.github.io/
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I am thrilled to announce that in January 2026 I will be starting my own lab at NYU Biology! Soon enough I will be recruiting postdocs and students! Please reach out if you are interested with a CV and description of your research interests, or if you know of people who could be interested! 🧬🗽 🦊
Reposted by Joana L. Rocha
📖Latest from the lab:
Evo. characterization #antiviral #SAMD9/9L across #kingdoms🚶‍♀️🦍🦠🧫🖥️: ancient #convergence + #adaptations @natecoevo.nature.com

Led by amazing Alexandre Legrand +major contributions by Rémi Demeure & Amandine Chantharath @ciri-lyon.bsky.social 1/n

www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Evolutionary characterization of antiviral SAMD9/9L across kingdoms supports ancient convergence and lineage-specific adaptations - Nature Ecology & Evolution
A search for analogues of the human SAMD9/9L antiviral genes identifies convergent evolution of this gene family in the bacterial and animal kingdoms, with species-specific and recent genomic signatur...
www.nature.com
November 12, 2025 at 5:55 PM
As an immigrant scientist in the U.S., travel bans and visa uncertainty are taking a toll | Science | AAAS www.science.org/content/arti...
As an immigrant scientist in the U.S., travel bans and visa uncertainty are taking a toll
“I began to question whether I truly belonged,” this postdoc writes
www.science.org
October 27, 2025 at 7:23 PM
Reposted by Joana L. Rocha
Reposted by Joana L. Rocha
We are excited to share GPN-Star, a cost-effective, biologically grounded genomic language modeling framework that achieves state-of-the-art performance across a wide range of variant effect prediction tasks relevant to human genetics.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
(1/n)
September 22, 2025 at 5:29 AM
Reposted by Joana L. Rocha
Very much looking forward to teaching our second edition of the Latin American biodiversity genomics course, this time in Argentina.
Introduction to Biodiversity Genomics Course
📅 Nov 24–28, 2025 | 📍 Mendoza, Argentina
In-person course for Latin Americans starting with genomic data analysis.
📝 Pre-registration open
🔗 biodiversitygenomicslatam.weebly.com
@joanameier.bsky.social @evoargentina.bsky.social
July 20, 2025 at 5:29 PM
I am thrilled to announce that in January 2026 I will be starting my own lab at NYU Biology! Soon enough I will be recruiting postdocs and students! Please reach out if you are interested with a CV and description of your research interests, or if you know of people who could be interested! 🧬🗽 🦊
June 25, 2025 at 8:10 PM
Reposted by Joana L. Rocha
So happy to share this paper! It's been so much fun working on this project with these amazing collaborators.
🧬 Now published in Bioinformatics Advances:  "TRACKing tandem repeats: A customizable pipeline for identification and cross-species comparison"

Find the full paper here:  https://doi.org/10.1093/bioadv/vbaf066

Authors include: @adamcarol.bsky.social, @joanocha.bsky.social, @psudmant.bsky.social
April 17, 2025 at 12:52 AM
On my way #PAG32! Excited to reunite with so many friends and colleagues working on plant and animal genomics, and to be giving a talk at the Wildlife symposium!
January 11, 2025 at 1:31 AM
Masterpiece
December 14, 2024 at 5:56 AM