April 1, 2025
Jordan RAMILOWSKI, PhD
Dr. Jordan Ramilowski is a Professor and the Director of Bioinformatics Laboratory at the Advanced Medical Research Center, Yokohama City University (YCU), which he joined in 2020 as an Associate Professor. He has a Master of Science and Engineering degree in Organic Chemistry from Poland and a Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry from Utah State University, USA. In 2010, he transitioned into the field of bioinformatics through a special appointment at a biotechnology company focused on therapeutic development. This career shift led him to join RIKEN Yokohama as a Bioinformatics Researcher (2011–2020), where he remains a Visiting Scientist.
Research
Dr. Ramilowski’s research broadly focuses on understanding the regulatory roles of long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) and ligand–receptor-mediated cell–cell communication. His collaborative work as member of the FANTOM International Genomic Consortium includes several pioneering contributions to these fields, such as:
- An atlas of human long non-coding RNAs with accurate 5′ ends (Nature, 2017)
- Functional annotation of human long noncoding RNAs via molecular phenotyping (Genome Res., 2020)
- A draft network of ligand–receptor-mediated multicellular signalling in humans (Nat. Commun., 2015)
Jordan is particularly interested in “how lncRNAs regulate gene expression in cancer, immunity, and disease progression”, as well as “how cells communicate with each through ligand-receptor-mediated binding”. He utilizes a high-performance computing infrastructure—which he co-manages at YCU—and a wide array of computational tools and methodologies, including nf-core pipelines, R, and Python to primarily analyze Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) bulk and single-cell data such as RNA-seq, Hi-C, ChIP-seq, ATAC-seq, and helps to develop AI foundational models relevant to gene regulation. In his research, he collaborates with biologists, clinicians, and computational scientists from Japan and internationally.
Education
Prof. Ramilowski is actively committed to advancing bioinformatics education through his leadership at Yokohama City University (YCU). His lab offers hands-on R programming courses specifically designed for medical and biological researchers, and hosts a series of seminars and lectures featuring industry and academic experts in computational biology who share insights on state-of-the-art developments in the field.
- Practical Bioinformatics Course in R/RStudio
- Current Trends in Bioinformatics Course
- Practical Bioinformatics: Special Single-Cell Course
Jordan is also an instructor and lecturer for the Karolinska Institutet (KI)–RIKEN Joint International Doctoral Courses, which provides advanced training in transcriptomics, epigenomics, and single-cell genomics to students from Japan and Sweden. Through these initiatives, he fosters international collaboration and prepares the next generation of bioinformaticians for cutting-edge research.
For fun, Jordan likes to play futsal, hike and ski.