I am a fifth-year CSE Ph.D. candidate at the University of California San Diego, advised by Professor Melissa Gymrek. Before joining UCSD, I received my B.Sc. in Computer Engineering from Sharif University of Technology. My research focuses on developing methods to explore ancestral genome diversity and its impact on human traits.
In the summer of 2022, I was an intern in the AI lab at Illumina, Inc. where I had the pleasure of working with Petko Fiziev. In the summer of 2024, I was an intern in the Michelangelo team at Uber, where I was fortunate to work with Bo Ling, Raajay Viswanathan, and Eric Chen on learning semantic IDs from item embeddings using an RQ-VAE model.
Publications
A deep population reference panel of tandem repeat variation
Helyaneh Ziaei Jam, Yang Li, Ross DeVito, Nima Mousavi, Nichole Ma, Ibra Lujumba, Yagoub Adam, Mikhail Maksimov, Bonnie Huang, Egor Dolzhenko, Yunjiang Qiu, Fredrick Elishama Kakembo, Habi Joseph, Blessing Onyido, Jumoke Adeyemi, Mehrdad Bakhtiari, Jonghun Park, Sara Javadzadeh, Daudi Jjingo, Ezekiel Adebiyi, Vineet Bafna & Melissa Gymrek
(Nature Communications 2023) Full Version
LongTR: genome-wide profiling of genetic variation at tandem repeats from long reads
Helyaneh Ziaei Jam, Justin M. Zook, Sara Javadzadeh, Jonghun Park, Aarushi Sehgal, Melissa Gymrek
(Genome Biology 2024) Full Version
Analysis and benchmarking of small and large genomic variants across tandem repeats
Adam English, Egor Dolzhenko, Helyaneh Ziaei Jam, Sean Mckenzie, Nathan D. Olson, Wouter De Coster, Jonghun Park, Bida Gu, Justin Wagner, Michael A Eberle, Melissa Gymrek, Mark J.P. Chaisson, Justin M. Zook, Fritz J Sedlazeck
(Nature Biotechnology 2024) Full Version
WebSTR: A Population-wide Database of Short Tandem Repeat Variation in Humans
Oxana (Sachenkova) Lundström, Max Adriaan Verbiest, Feifei Xia, Helyaneh Ziaei Jam, Inti Zlobec, Maria Anisimova, Melissa Gymrek
(Journal of Molecular Biology 2023) Full Version
Genome-wide detection of somatic mosaicism at short tandem repeats
Aarushi Sehgal, Helyaneh Ziaei Jam, Andrew Shen, Melissa Gymrek
(Bioinformatics 2024) Full Version
A practical guide to identifying associations between tandem repeats and complex human traits using consensus genotypes from multiple tools
Ibra Lujumba, Yagoub Adam, Helyaneh Ziaei Jam, Itunuoluwa Isewon, Nomakhosazana Monnakgotla, Yang Li, Blessing Onyido, Kakembo Fredrick, Faith Adegoke, Jerry Emmanuel, Jumoke Adeyemi, Olajumoke Ibitoye, Samuel Owusu-Ansah, Matthew Boladele Akanle, Habi Joseph, Mike Nsubuga, Ronald Galiwango, Martin Okitwi, Namuswe Magdalene, Odur Walter, Zama Mngadi, Marion Adebiyi, Jelili Oyelade, Melissa Nel, Daudi Jjingo, Melissa Gymrek, Ezekiel Adebiyi
(Nature Protocols 2025) Full Version
Long Read Genome Sequencing Elucidates Diverse Functional Consequences of Structural and Repeat Variation in Autism
Milad Mortazavi, James Guevara, Joshua Diaz, Stephen Tran, Helyaneh Ziaei Jam, Sergey Batalov, Matthew Bainbridge, Aaron D. Besterman, Melissa Gymrek, Abraham A. Palmer, Jonathan Sebat
preprint
Defining a tandem repeat catalog and variation clusters for genome-wide analyses and population databases
Ben Weisburd, Egor Dolzhenko, Mark F. Bennett, Matt C. Danzi, Adam English, Laurel Hiatt, Hope Tanudisastro, Nehir Edibe Kurtas, Helyaneh Ziaei Jam, Harrison Brand, Fritz J. Sedlazeck, Melissa Gymrek, Harriet Dashnow, Michael A. Eberle, Heidi L. Rehm
preprint
Genome-wide selection inference at short tandem repeats
Bonnie Huang, Arun Durvasula, Nima Mousavi, Helyaneh Ziaei Jam, Mikhail Maksimov, Kirk E. Lohmueller, Melissa Gymrek
preprint
Honors and Awards
Selected as one of the five graduate students for the 2025 class of Siebel Scholars program at UC San Diego.
Recipient of the 2024-25 Friends of the International Center Fellowship, associated with the UC San Diego University.
Recipient of UC San Diego University 2020-2021 Doctoral Fellowship.
Silver Medal in the National Astronomy and Astrophysics Olympiad Iran, 2014.