Basheer Becerra's Personal Site
Bioinformatics PhD Student @ Harvard.
To view my CV,
please click here.
Personal website last updated: 12/23/2025
About Me
My name is Basheer Becerra
(pronounced as BUH-sheer
beh-SEH-ruh).
- PhD student in Bioinformatics
& Integrative Genomics (BIG) at Harvard Medical School
Co-advised by Dr. Luca Pinello and Dr. Daniel Bauer
NSF F31 Funded - Bachelors from Illinois State
University
Double major Computer Science/Statistics with Honors, Minor in Biology
(3.98/4.00 GPA)
Selected commencement speaker; Bone Scholar (highest university award)
Research Summary
Research experience during PhD
In my thesis work, I established experimental and computational methods to perform
high-resolution functional mapping of non-coding and coding elements using
technologies such
as in-situ genome-editing or ex-situ reporter assays.
I have initially established a variant-level resolution base-editing mutagenesis
framework
on a putative CD19 enhancer to identify variants conferring resistance to CAR-T
therapies.
Becerra et al.,
bioRxiv 2024 (recent acceptance to Nature
Communications).
Oral presentation
Mutational Scanning Symposium '23 @ Sanger Institute
My largest effort involved improving and applying the base-editing framework (along with
performing ex-situ reporter assays, in-situ prime-editing, and
in-silico
ChromBPnet)
on the HBG promoter and BCL11A enhancers to identify therapeutic
editing strategies for
beta-hemoglobinopathies such as sickle cell disease. This resulted in the
identification of novel base-editing and prime-editing therapeutic strategies
(manuscript submission pending IP preparation).
Oral presentation ASHG '25 @ Boston
Aspects of my developed framework has been applied in several ongoing works
including
erythroid trait
variant installation and mutagenesis of the DDX6 gene, MNX1 enhancer,
PD-L1 enhancer, and
TINF1 gene.
Professional Summary
Professional experiences prior to PhD
Prior to PhD, I have worked multiple professional experiences
throughout
undergraduate
ranging from computational genomics, to data science
and
software
engineering.
I have spent three years during my initial years of undergrad working
as a software
engineer intern at State Farm. I was awarded two of the most
prestigious company awards
as an intern: 2017 State Farm Innovator Award and 2016 Q3 Special
Achievement Award. I
contributed to 8 different projects among 6 different teams working on various back-end
web services.
I left State Farm the summer after my third year of undergrad to attend Cold
Spring
Harbor Laboratory's (CSHL) Undergraduate Research Program (~5% acceptance
rate) working in
cancer genomics in Dr. Alexander Krasnitz's lab.
After that summer, during my last year of undergrad, I continued working
remotely
at CSHL
and worked as a lead data scientist at local company Advance Trading,
Inc. developing
predictive models of commodity pricing.
After graduation prior to PhD, I worked as a computational genomics summer
intern at Vertex Pharmaceuticals working between the Computational Genomics
and Alpha1-Antitrypsin Deficiency Biology teams.
Altogether, while pursuing a double major (computer science, statistics) & minor
(biology) courseload in undergrad, I have still dedicated substantial time
for various professional and research experiences. During PhD, I have focused on depth
by identifying my research area of interest and establishing my scientific investigation
skills. After graduation, I hope to make substantial contributions to the field as a
scientific leader.
Personal
Just a bit about me
Outside of work, I enjoy all things triathlon: open-water swimming at Walden Pond,
bike-packing in Vermont on the weekends, and runs along the Charles. I've done a couple
full-distance Ironman races (2.1mi swim, 112mi bike, 26.2mi run) and several
half-Ironmans.
