William Barker
Scientist | Bridging Virology and Data Science to Accelerate Vaccine Innovation
- Role
- Scientist, Virology at CSL
- Location
- Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill, NC, US
- LinkedIn followers
- 500 followers
About William Barker
I’m a PhD chemist, virologist, and data scientist working at the intersection of…
Experience
Scientist, Virology
Jun 2021 — Present · Holly Springs, NC, US
Developed ML/AI models to interrogate the stochastic behavior of viral evolution and virus-host dynamics, guiding data-driven vaccine design.• Built and maintained cloud-native pipelines for high-throughput RNA-seq processing, mutation tracking, and transcriptomic analysis.• Expanded internal vaccine development datasets via NGS of engineered strains; enabled feature extraction and strain prioritization through DESeq2 and custom scripts.• Increased antigen yield in Flucelvax seasonal vaccine by engineering transgenic influenza strains with improved growth kinetics in MDCK-based systems.• Produced GMP-compliant viral seed stocks using reverse genetics under BSL2+/BSL3 containment; supported a $60M+ government contract for pilot-scale vaccine manufacturing.• Integrated reverse genetics with transfer learning to generate novel influenza protein sequences using a fine-tuned ProteinBERT transformer model.• Applied LSTM networks, genetic algorithms, and graph neural networks to model protein structure-function relationships for rational antigen design.• Authored user-friendly documentation and internal SOPs to support adoption of sequencing and modeling tools by virologists and wet-lab staff.• Presented modeling insights and experimental findings to senior leadership and cross-functional stakeholders to inform strain selection and R&D strategy.• Collaborated with PMs, regulatory teams, and computational scientists to bridge wet lab outcomes with predictive analytics and informatics infrastructure.
Education
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
BS, Chemistry
2009 — 2013
University of Notre Dame
PhD, Chemistry
2016 — 2020
Skills
- Healthcare
- Biochemistry
- Research
- Organic Chemistry
- Emt
- Chemical Synthesis
- Leadership
- Cpr Certified
- Bacterial Physiology
- Small Molecules
- Antibiotic Resistance
- Genetics
- Chemistry
- Pharmaceutics
- Dna Sequencing
- Recombinant Dna
- Patient Advocacy
- Statistical Data Analysis
- Stem Cells
- Radioactive Materials
- Chemical Safety
- Bloodborne Pathogens Training
- Mouse Handling
- Mouse Models
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