saberhq.com

Saber HQ

Friendly notes on what I’m building, reading, and figuring out.

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My name is Saber. I’m a Research Scientist with 12+ years of experience in genomics, data science, and machine learning. I earned my Ph.D. in Bioinformatics at the University of British Columbia (UBC), where I was advised by Prof. Dr. Inanc Birol, working at the Bioinformatics Technology Lab. During my Ph.D., I broadly worked on developing computational tools and software solutions for next-generation sequencing technologies. My doctoral dissertation (see here) was focused on utilizing machine learning in transcriptome analysis. I am passionate about contributing to the understanding, controlling, and training of foundation models for biology. Before starting at UBC, I received my M.Sc. in Bioinformatics from METU, where I was advised by Dr. Hilal Kazan and Dr. Yesim Aydin Son. My B.Sc. was in Information Technology Engineering.

Perturb-seqrepresentation learninglong-read RNA-seq Virtual Cell Challenge
Sep 2025 — Launched this website. It uses Hugo with the Book Theme. Jul 2025 — Joined Genentech as a Computational Scientist. Jun 2025 — Attended ICML in Vancouver. Dec 2024 — Attended NeurIPS in Vancouver. Jul 2024 — Defended my PhD dissertation and graduated from UBC. Jun 2024 — The LRGASP research is published in Nature Methods. May 2024 — ntEmbd is available on BioRxiv. Jun 2023 — Presented ntEmbd at the ISMB/ECCB conference in Lyon, France. May 2023 — RNA‑Bloom2 is published in Nature Communications. Mar 2023 — Meta‑NanoSim is published in GigaScience.