SciencePond | Rafael Oliveira's CV and Blog

𝘽𝙖𝙘𝙠𝙜𝙧𝙤𝙪𝙣𝙙: As a Clinical Bioinformatician by training, I hold a Bachelor’s degree in Biology (BSc), two postgraduate diplomas (Molecular Biomedicine & Applied Statistics to Health Sciences) and a Master’s degree in Clinical Bioinformatics (MSc) with a major in Clinical Decision Support. I am currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Medical Technology at NTNU, focusing on stratifying small-cell lung cancer patients by cancer subtype and identifying novel biomarkers. My goal is to improve patient stratification by discovering mechanisms of treatment resistance and vulnerabilities, improving both treatment outcomes and prognosis.

𝙑𝙞𝙨𝙞𝙤𝙣: Within this domain, I’ve been focused on learning more about the applications of Clinical Bioinformatics, Biomedical Data Science and Medical Statistics in Transcriptomics to hunt for biomarkers predictive of response/resistance to treatment, prognosis and diagnosis in Oncology.

My main goal is to apply my academic knowledge and industry experience to work in translational biomedical research (T0-T3) in the Pharma/Biotech Industry. I aim to develop Software as Medical Device (SaMD) solutions that function as Clinical Decision Support Systems (CDSS), using LLMs, Machine Learning and Computer Vision in the field of (radio)transcriptomics and Spatial Transcriptomics applied to Oncology.

𝙀𝙭𝙥𝙚𝙧𝙞𝙚𝙣𝙘𝙚: With over 2 years of combined experience as a Data Scientist and as a Bioinformatician in the industry, I’ve worked as a FullStack trainee for the development of landing pages for investment courses and automated stock web-scrappers. Additionally, I worked as a Data Scientist while finishing my MSc thesis in Radiomics applied to papillary thyroid cancer. During my PhD, I’ve also joined a part-time temporary position at a startup as a Bioinformatician.

𝙃𝙤𝙗𝙗𝙞𝙚𝙨: I am a big advocate that in order to succeed we need to take care of our mental and physical well-being so during my free time I like to exercise and read. Currently, my reading interests are “Emotional Intelligence” by Daniel Goleman, “7 Habits of Highly Effective People” by Stephen Covey, and “Learned Optimism” by Martin Seligman. I also use the flexibility that e-Learning platforms offer to study daily by enrolling in several month-long specializations in the fields of Bioinformatics, Statistics, Machine Learning, and Deep Learning to broaden my knowledge and apply it to Oncology.