Vatsal Mehra

Bioinformatician and Software Developer

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From building healthcare technologies to exploring human development and systems change, I bring together rich technical exprience and understanding of human behavior, to tackle complex challenges. Over a decade in bioinformatics and software development has equipped me to lead teams, create data-driven solutions and build tools that drive breakthroughs in biomedical research. Recently, I’ve expanded my focus by founding initiatives that bridge analytical thinking with emotional intelligence - running a coaching practice at Rational Resilience and co-building Portal, a space for epistemic and personal growth. I combine systematic problem-solving with deep understanding of human factors to drive impact, whether through technology, coaching, or community building. Always eager to take on interesting challenges that leverage both technical and human development skills.


Work Experience

Workshop Designer & Facilitator

Effective Altruism Infrastructure Fund & Effective Ventures | Aug 2025 - Present

Running 12 hands-on workshops in Bangalore & Hyderabad to help people think clearer, make better decisions, and catch their biases.

    Founder & Coach @ Rational Resilience

    Rational Resilience | Nov 2024 - Present

    Built and lead a coaching practice that helps clients make better decisions and build resilience by blending practical problem-solving with emotional awareness.

      Co-founder @ Portal

      MetaRationality LLP | Sep 2024 - Present

      Building a community space that enables epistemic & emotional growth while inspiring impactful work on local & global catastrophic risks.

        Product Manager

        Indx.Ai/OneCell Diagnostics | Nov 2022 - Feb 2024

        Built and managed the development of the iCare platform, enabling oncologists to understand the mutational profiles of their patients and suggest appropriate cancer therapies.

        • Gathered requirements from various stakeholders and translated them into appropriate user interfaces and pipelines.
        • Led a team of software developers and bioinformaticians on various projects within iCare.
        • Designed interactive user interfaces and robust bioinformatics pipelines for flagship products such as OncoDx and OncoPredikt.
        • Oversaw and executed deployment activities, ensuring smooth transitions through all phases of the software development lifecycle (SDLC).

        Data Scientist

        Indx.Ai | Aug 2021 - Nov 2022

        Built a web app from scratch that identifies and annotates rare mutations in cancer patients, providing an interactive interface for oncologists to track patients and discover appropriate treatments.

          Bioinformatician

          Marquette University | Dec 2018 - Jan 2021

          As the solo developer for a lab trying to cure spinal cord injury, I designed and developed multiple bioinformatics piplines and web tools that provide novel insights in genetic and epigenetic regulation behind axon growth.

          • Developed bioinformatics pipelines that discovered novel transcription factor combinations regulating axon growth.
          • Created a web tool that allows scientists to visualize ATAC-Seq, RNA-seq and Histone Chip-Seq datasets across different time points in development of mice.
          • Developed a website that visualizes and quantifies supra spinal neurons with projections to the cervical, thoracic and lumbar segments.

          Programmer Analyst

          Medical College of Wisconsin | April 2018 - July 2018

          Developed a tool for the Rat Genome database that provides a unique way to seamlessly visualize and perform set operations on lists of genes.

            Bioinformatics Support Analyst

            Blood Center of Wisconsin | Oct 2016 - March 2018

            • Developed web-based tools using the Flask framework, that automate and simplify the Bioinformatics workflow of Molecular Diagnostics Lab
            • Human clinical genomics - Monitored NGS workflow, develop variant calling and variant annotation pipelines
            • Designed and created an interactive web tool VIRAS, that provides a graphical view to analyze nucleotide mismatches between patients 10.1016/j.bbmt.2018.12.006
            • Developed data visualization tools using d3.js to help investigators analyze NGS workflow and patient report data

            Consultant Bioinformatician

            Marquette Univeristy | May 2016 - Oct 2016

            Developed custom shell scripts that automate RNA-Seq, and ChIP-Seq workflows

              Research Assistant

              Marqutte University | Aug 2015 - May 2016

              Designed & developed SNPredict, a tool that predicts rare somatic variants using multiple machine learning training algorithms like kNN & LinearSVC

                Software Enginner

                Tech Mahindra, India | Aug 2010 - Nov 2013

                Lead production support duties. Designed, coded and maintained Bash shell scripts to automate tasks for checking and updating status of AT&T servers.

                  Projects

                  Interactive visualizations to gain novel insights from time series NGS experiments on murine whole cortex

                  3d mouse brain

                  Open Source

                  3d visualization and quantification of supra spinal neurons with projections to the cervical, thoracic and lumbar segments.

                  Teach Me A Bias

                  Under Active Development

                  A place to learn about different cognitive biases and how to overcome them.

                  A podcast that discusses human biases to better understand and improve human thinking/decision making

                  A course/club designed for exploring different frameworks and techniques to achieve what we most want, given the physical and mental resources available to us.

                  Hyderabad Rationality Meetup

                  Meetup

                  A bi-weekly meetup that explores the depths of rational thinking with a focus on systematically improving epistemic and instrumental rationality skills. See here for a definition of rationality we like to work with.

                  Publications

                  Other Academic Interests

                  Rationality, Educational Psychology, Effective Altruism, Evolutionary Biology, Cognitive Science