NAME: Jacob Shreve
SPECIALTY: Oncology
RESIDENCY MATCH: Cleveland Clinic
On his first day as a medical student at IU School of Medicine’s South Bend campus, Jacob Shreve was asked to tell his classmates something fun about himself. He said he could put together a really good stereo system, should anyone ever need one. Shreve’s audiophile abilities aren’t his only surprise talent though: he’s also a bit of a bioinformatics wiz.
Shreve, his wife and their young daughter will soon be headed to Cleveland, Ohio. At the Cleveland Clinic, Shreve will begin his residency and career as a clinical scientist in oncology, researching personal genomics. It’s a path he has been working toward since his days as an undergraduate microbiology lab assistant at Purdue.
Shreve also earned his master’s degree at Purdue, which led to a position working with Purdue’s Bioinfomatics Core. His projects there included work with genome assembly, gene expression studies and identifying new genes. Shreve’s next steps led him to become a computational scientist at Penn State University Huck Institute of the Life Sciences, Center for Disease Dynamics. There, Shreve worked to develop Virus Genome Assembly software (VirGA), which researchers used to sequence and assemble herpes simplex virus genomes. Shreve then decided to make the jump to medical school.
Blending bioinformatics and medicine
While in medical school, Shreve continued research work with Penn State on VirGA software. He also worked as lead bioinformatician of a biotech company involved in personal genomics. Always busy, Shreve participated in a South Bend-based research project involving blood products in trauma situations as well.
But Shreve’s time hasn’t only been spent in bioinformatics or medical school. Shreve’s role as vice president of the Navari Student Outreach Clinic helped provide the volunteer student clinic with a steady future.
Shreve’s long-term goal is to treat patients half the time, and use the other half of his time to develop the field of precision medicine through his work in bioinformatics and personal genomics.
Written by Gail Mancini — IU School of Medicine South Bend campus
