I am a bioinformatician who uses computational techniques to drive knowledge discovery in biology. I completed a M.Sc. in Computer Science with a focus on Bioinformatics at the University of Freiburg, Germany. In 2008, I commenced a Ph.D. at the University of Western Australia in which I developed novel methods for the computational prediction of non-coding RNA structure. In 2012, I joined CSIRO as a Postdoctoral Fellow to work on plant-pathogen interactions. In 2018, I joined the Australian National University as a Research Fellow at the Biological Data Science Institute and was awarded a 2019 ARC Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA) to uncover how rust fungi cause devastating plant diseases. In 2021 I joined CSIRO as a Senior Research Scientist where I lead the Data Intensive Approaches team.
Jana is the winner of the 2018 New Phytologist Tansley Medal for excellence in plant science.