Bioinformatics Dahlia Nielsen
Associate Professor, Biological Sciences
Dahlia Nielsen joined NC State in August 2014 as a Chancellor’s Faculty Excellence Program cluster hire in Bioinformatics. She is an associate professor in the Department of Biological Sciences and a resident member of the Bioinformatics Research Center. Her research focuses on methods development and applications in identifying genes’ underlying complex traits, and on identifying genes that respond differently under different environmental, temporal or developmental conditions. One of her primary academic goals is to create an integrated research program combining methodological development with experimental approaches. A major focus of her lab involves translating traditional bioinformatics approaches into novel techniques for identifying and characterizing host-parasite interactions. Another area of interest is leveraging large public repositories of gene expression data to formulate interesting new research questions.
Nielsen started along her research path as an undergraduate when she joined a scientific lab investigating the genetic basis of milk production in dairy cattle. She earned her bachelor of science in computer science at the University of Utah, and completed a master’s degree in statistics and a Ph.D. in genetics at NC State. While she was finishing her Ph.D., she accepted a position in the bioinformatics group at GlaxoWellcome, Inc., where she worked for several years before returning to a research position at NC State in 2000.
