Karthik Gangavarapu

Karthik Gangavarapu, PhD, is an Institute Investigator in the Department of Translational Medicine at Scripps Research. His research focuses on computational biology applied to infectious diseases, with a focus on phylogenetic and phylodynamic methods to study viral transmission dynamics. Notably, he has contributed to genomic epidemiology by developing widely used software tools such as PrimalSeq and iVar for analyzing viral genomes and enabling genomic surveillance. His work also includes leveraging GPU-based computational libraries for statistical phylogenetics, enhancing computational efficiency in evolutionary analyses.

Education includes a Ph.D. in Computational Biology from Scripps Research (2021) and postdoctoral training at UCLA. His research interests span viral outbreaks like Zika, Ebola, and SARS-CoV-2, with a focus on understanding transmission patterns and developing methodologies for genomic surveillance.

Key contributions include Outbreak.info, a platform for scalable SARS-CoV-2 variant surveillance, and genetic tracing studies that elucidate the origins of viruses like mpox and SARS-CoV-2. His articles highlight collaborations on global epidemics, wildlife-virus interfaces, and computational advancements in phylogenetics.

Grants and advising details are unspecified, but his work underscores collaborative efforts in public health and bioinformatics. Ongoing projects likely involve genomic epidemiology and tool development for viral outbreak analysis.