Harold Pimentel
Assistant Professor at University of California, Los Angeles
Los Angeles, California, United States
Summary
👤
Senior🎓
Top SchoolHarold Pimentel is an Assistant Professor in Computational Medicine and Human Genetics at UCLA with 14 years of experience at the intersection of computer science, statistics, and functional genetics. He develops computational and statistical methods for RNA and complex-trait analysis, building on PhD work in computational genomics and an M.A. in statistics from UC Berkeley. His postdoctoral work produced rapid, reproducible algorithms for intron retention detection, QTL analysis, and experimental design for high-throughput CRISPR screens. Harold also contributes to foundational bioinformatics software—working on the widely used kallisto project where he improved core data structures, testing, and development tooling. Based in Los Angeles, he blends academic rigor with hands-on engineering and DevOps practice, enabling reproducible analysis pipelines for genomics. He often brings insights from scalable computing and distributed systems to biological data problems, a less obvious thread running through his early and ongoing projects.
14 years of coding experience
10 years of employment as a software developer
Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Computer Science, Computational Genomics, Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Computer Science, Computational Genomics at University of California, BerkeleyBachelor of Science (B.S.), Computer Science, Mathematics, Bachelor of Science (B.S.), Computer Science, Mathematics at California State University-Fullerton
Stackoverflow
313reputation
16kreached
2answers
7questions
Github Skills (13)
algorithm10
algorithms10
c-language10
cprogramming-language10
testing9
git8
hdf6
eclipse6
correlation6
ggplot6
keyboard-shortcuts6
forloop6
if-statement6
Programming languages (9)
Github contributions (5)
pachterlab/kallisto
Nov 2014 - Apr 2016
Near-optimal RNA-Seq quantification
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer & DevOps Engineer
Back-end Developer & DevOps EngineerContributions:8 releases, 260 commits, 27 PRs in 1 year 5 months
Contributions summary:Harold contributed to the project by adding configuration files for YouCompleteMe and including the Catch framework for testing, indicating a focus on improving the development environment. They implemented a KmerView class and associated tests, demonstrating work on core data structures and algorithms relevant to the project's domain. Furthermore, this user fixed bugs, refactored tests, and added functionality for reverse complement, showcasing skills in core code development and potentially some aspects of project infrastructure and testing.
pseudoalignmentsequencernaseqkallistobioinformatics
pimentel/mamabear
Aug 2015 - Apr 2017
Contributions:2 releases, 24 commits, 2 pushes in 1 year 8 months
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