Rahul Siddharthan

Rahul Siddharthan is a computational biologist at The Institute of Mathematical Sciences (IMSc), Chennai, with research interests spanning bioinformatics algorithms, regulatory genomics, chromatin structure, evolutionary biology, and machine learning applications in clinical outcomes. He holds a PhD in Physics from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, and transitioned to biology during a postdoc at the Rockefeller University, New York. At IMSc, he has led the Computational Biology group since 2013 and contributed to a new PhD program in this field.

• PhD: Physics, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore
• Postdoc: Rockefeller University, New York
• Current Affiliation: IMSc, Chennai
• Leadership: Computational Biology group (since 2013)

Research Interests include:

• Bioinformatics Algorithms
• Regulatory Genomics
• Chromatin Structure
• Evolutionary Biology
• Machine Learning in Clinical Data

His recent publications focus on machine learning for fetal growth prediction, clustering methods for clinical data, and evolutionary analysis of fungal pathogens. He actively supervises PhD students and collaborates with medical institutions like Apollo Hospitals and Warwick Medical School. Rahul also organizes interdisciplinary workshops such as 'Machine Learning for Health and Disease' at ICTS Bengaluru and 'Aspects of Gene and Cellular Regulation' at IMSc.

Advising and Collaborations involve mentoring current PhD students Sankarsan Dutta and Akash Sivaraman, with past advisees including Pavitra S (defended 2025), Chandrani Kumari (submitted 2024), and Rakesh Netha Vadnala (PhD 2023). Key collaborators include Dr. Uma Ram (Seethapathy Clinic), Leelavati Narlikar (IISER Pune), and Ponnusamy Saravanan (Warwick).

Technical Contributions include developing algorithms like THiCweed for ChIP-seq motif discovery and ClaID for Candida auris clade identification. His group engages in projects related to chromatin organization, transcription factor interactions, and genomic data analysis.