Dr. Elena Rivas

Biography

Elena Rivas is a Senior Research Fellow at Harvard University in the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology. Her primary research focuses on the development of computational methods for RNA structure prediction and the identification of new RNA functions. She is involved in creating computational screens to identify evolutionarily conserved RNA structures across various organisms. A significant aspect of her work addresses urgent issues in RNA computational biology, particularly the discovery and functional significance of long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs), and aims to differentiate between transcriptional noise artifacts and functionally important subsets. Through her research, Rivas has shown that conserved RNA structure prediction and analysis serve as essential tools for understanding functional RNAs and for distinguishing between artifacts and actual biological signals. Her high-level objective includes designing new algorithms that reliably determine the biological significance of sequences, using probabilistic models and rigorous statistical inference for improved RNA function identification.

Research Interests