Research Interests
I am a Genomic Systems Analyst at the Garvan Institute with a background in clinical pathology testing, algorithms and software development. Leading computational development within the Centre for Population Genomics' Genomic Technologies Group, I apply my unique skills to develop new bioinformatic tools, as well as design and support nanopore sequencing infrastructure.
My research areas include:
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Nanopore signal analysis
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Clinical testing and method development
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Short tandem repeat disorders
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Viral genomics (HIV/SARS-Cov-2)
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Single-cell sequencing
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Direct RNA Sequencing
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Genome assembly
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Methylation detection
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Machine/Deep learning
Publication Highlights
Ferguson, J. M. and M. A. Smith (2019). "SquiggleKit: a toolkit for manipulating nanopore signal data." Bioinformatics 35(24): 5372-5373.
Smith, M. A., T. Ersavas, J. M. Ferguson, H. Liu, M. C. Lucas, O. Begik, L. Bojarski, K. Barton and E. M. Novoa (2020). "Molecular barcoding of native RNAs using nanopore sequencing and deep learning." Genome Res 30(9): 1345-1353.
Ferguson, J. M., H. Gamaarachchi, T. Nguyen, A. Gollon, S. Tong, C. Aquilina-Reid, R. Bowen-James and I. W. Deveson (2021). "InterARTIC: an interactive web application for whole-genome nanopore sequencing analysis of SARS-CoV-2 and other viruses." Bioinformatics.