Background
Stephen R. Piccolo is an assistant professor in the Department of Biology at Brigham Young University (BYU). He earned a B.S. degree in Management Information Systems from BYU in 2001 and then worked as a programmer/analyst for five years at Intel Corporation in Chandler, Arizona (where he met his wife, Laurel Harmon). In 2011, he received a PhD in Biomedical Informatics from the University of Utah (advised by Dr. Lewis J. Frey). From 2011-2014, he was postdoctoral researcher jointly at the University of Utah (Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology, advised by Dr. Andrea H. Bild) and Boston University School of Medicine (Division of Computational Biomedicine, advised by Dr. W. Evan Johnson). Stephen is thrilled to be part of the BYU community. He teaches classes in biology, bioinformatics, and data science.
Dr. Piccolo is often recruiting students to do research in his lab. Students interested in discussing research possibilities should first read the Policies page.
Cancer Research
My lab’s overarching goal is to make discoveries that transform our understanding of biology and human health—discoveries that may only be realized with the aid of advanced computational approaches. Recent biotechnological advances have enabled life scientists to profile organisms, tissues, and cells at an unprecedented scale. For example, high-throughput molecular profiling has made it possible to identify DNA variation across entire genomes and to quantify the presence of RNA transcripts, proteins, metabolites, and various other types of molecules. These data have incredible potential to shed light on basic biological processes and disease mechanisms. However, to make best use of such large and complex data sets, an interdisciplinary approach is crucial. Accordingly, my lab integrates knowledge and techniques across various fields, including biology, computer science, medicine, and statistics. I am currently involved in various projects related to breast, ovarian, endometrial, colorectal, and brain cancers. In addition, we often perform analyses that span many different cancer types.