Melissa Haendel

Major Responsibilities

•  Co-lead of the Ontology Development Group within the OHSU Library and Department. of Medical Informatics and Epidemiology
•  Lead ontologist for the eagle-i project (eagle-i.net), an ontology driven system designed to collect and disseminate information about scientific resources and publish Linked Open Data
•  Development of ontologies and best practices for representation and query of biomedical resources, model organisms and clinical specimens
•  Content management for eagle-i Consortium
•  End-user requirements and user interface design and testing
•  Management of Data Curation team

Education

Ph.D. Neuroscience (1999) University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI
B.A. Chemistry (1991) Reed College, Portland, OR

Research experience

•  Ontologist and Scientific Curator (2004-2009) Dr. Monte Westerfield, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR
•  Post-doctoral fellow (2002-2004) Dr. George Bailey and Dr. Robert Tanguay, Oregon State University, Corvalis, OR
•  Post-doctoral fellow (2000-2002) Dr. Judith Eisen and Dr. Beatrice Darimont, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR
•  Graduate Research Assistant (1993-1999) Dr. Gary Lyons, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI
•  Laboratory technician (1993) Dr. David Barnes, Oregon State University, Corvalis, OR
•  Undergraduate Research Assistant (1990-1991) Dr. Alan Shusterman, Reed College, Portland, OR

Select Teaching Experience

•  Workshop coordinator, International Conference on Biomedical Ontology (2011) Co-organized a workshop to disseminate best practices in anatomy ontology development.
•  Informatics Fellow mentor, Oregon Health and Science University (2010-present) Mentored student project to model reagents and cell lines with ontologies for the purposes of resource discovery and experimental inference.
•  Undergraduate mentor, University of Oregon (2008) Mentored student project to model the zebrafish brain with ontologies.

Select Publications and Presentations

•  Nicole Vasilevsky, Tenille Johnson, Karen Corday, Carlo Torniai, Matthew Brush, Erik Segerdell, Melanie Wilson, Chris Shaffer, David Robinson and Melissa Haendel (2012) Research resources: curating the new eagle-i discovery system. Database Vol. 2012, bar067.                                             

•  Torniai, C., Brush, M., Vasilevsky, N., Segerdell, E., Wison, M., Johnson, T., Corday, K., Shaffer, C., and Haendel, M. (2011) Developing an application ontology for biomedical resource annotation and retrieval: Challenges and lessons learned. International Conference on Biomedical Ontology 2011; July 26–30, 2011; Buffalo, NY.                                                                                                               

•  Mungall CJ, Anderson D, Bandrowski A, Canada B, Chatyr-Aryamontri A, Cheng K, Conn PM, Dolinski K, Ellisman M, Eppig J, Grethe JS, Kemnitz J, Iadonato S, Larson SD, Magness C, Martone ME, Tyers M, Torniai C, Troyanskaya O, Turner J, Westerfield M, Haendel MA. (2011) An ontology-based approach to linking model organisms and resources to human diseases. Poster presentation at: International Conference on Biomedical Ontology 2011; July 26–30, 2011; Buffalo, NY.                                                                                                                                                         

•  Mitchell S, Torniai C, Lowe, B, Corson-Rikert J, Wilson M, Ahmed M, Chen S, Ding Y, Rejack N, Haendel MA. (2011) Aligning research resource and researcher representation: the eagle-i and VIVO use case. Poster presentation at: International Conference on Biomedical Ontology 2011; July 26–30, 2011; Buffalo, NY.

•  Brush MH, Vasilevsky N, Torniai C, Johnson T, Shaffer C, Haendel MA. (2011) Developing a reagent application ontology within the OBO Foundry Framework. Poster presentation at: International Conference on Biomedical Ontology 2011; July 26–30, 2011; Buffalo, NY.

•  Mungall, C.J., Gkoutos, G.V., Smith, C.L., Haendel, M.A., Lewis, S.E., and Ashburner, M. (2010) Integrating Phenotype Ontologies across Multiple Species. Genome Biol. 2010 Jan 8;11(1):R2.        

•  Washington, N.L.*, Haendel, M.A.*, Mungall, C.J., Ashburner, M., Westerfield, M., and Lewis, S.L. (2009) Linking human disease to animal models using ontology-based phenotype annotation. PLoS Biol. 2009 Nov;7(11):e1000247. Epub 2009 Nov 24.                                                                     *These authors contributed equally to this manuscript.                                                                         

•  Haendel, M.A., F. Neuhaus, D.S. Osumi-Sutherland, P.M. Mabee, J.L.V. Mejino, C.J. Mungall and B. Smith. (2008) CARO - The Common Anatomy Reference Ontology. In: Anatomy Ontologies for Bioinformatics: Principles and Practice, A. Burger, D. Davidson and R. Baldock (eds).

Professional honors

•  Open Biomedical Ontology Coordinating Board 2010-present
•  Phenotype Resource Coordination Network participant 2010-present
•  RJ Reynolds Post-doctoral Research award 2002-2004
•  Individual Post-doctoral National Research Service Award, NIH 2000-2003
•  American Association of Cancer Research Pathobiology Workshop participant 2003
•  Instructor at the Center for Talented Youth, Johns Hopkins University 1999
•  Individual Pre-doctoral National Research Service Award, NIH 1997-1999
•  Commended for Excellence in Scholarship, Reed College 1991

Outside of work:

When not working, Melissa is usually planting, harvesting, cooking, or eating food.