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Hire Chouaib B.

Finland

USD 18 /hr

Bioinformatics & Data Science Expert | HPC Pipelines | Metagenomics, R & Python

Profile Summary

During my tenure as a Research Assistant at the University of Turku within the Turku Data Science Group, I engaged in a wide range of tasks—from teaching and R package development to creating tutorials and refining metagenomics data processing pipelines. Although I initially had limited exposure to metagenomics, I quickly immersed myself in learning how such data is generated, sampled, and preprocessed. This agility in adapting to novel datasets extended to my work on combining clinical data with metagenomics outputs for the FINRISK2002 cohort (managed by the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare). I also supported collaborative projects in areas such as nutrition research—specifically, the Fish Oil and Probiotics in Pregnancy (FOPP) study—and metabolomics-based investigations into Lyme borreliosis infectious disease. Much of my computational work involved reproducible workflows built with Snakemake, Python, shell scripting, bash, and R, run on the Finnish CSC supercomputing facility. I complemented these larger-scale pipelines with local R Markdown–based reporting, ensuring my analyses remained transparent and easily adaptable. This approach helped deliver data-driven insights efficiently and consistently, benefiting colleagues and collaborators with varied technical backgrounds. In terms of methodological expertise, I have a solid foundation in regression models, regularization techniques, feature importance ranking, and machine learning algorithms such as XGBoost. My projects often required me to evaluate performance across high-dimensional datasets, maintain rigorous documentation, and clearly communicate results to both specialist and non-specialist audiences. I believe that fostering a solutions-oriented, collaborative environment is critical to maximizing the impact of data science. Alongside my core analytics competencies, I have a basic familiarity with SQL, having worked with it in conjunction with Python and R during academic projects. I also practice version- controlled, reproducible data science principles, which I consider essential for building robust and maintainable solutions.

Subject Matter Expertise

• ☆ Molecular Biology
• ☆ Omics
• ☆ Metabolomics
• ☆ Genomics
• ☆ Computer Science
• ☆ Supercomputing
• ☆ Data Analysis
• ☆ Data Processing
• ☆ Machine Learning
• ☆ Bioinformatics
• ☆ Python
• ☆ SQL
• ☆ R
• ☆ Tableau
• ☆ Case Studies

Services

• Writing
• Research
• Consulting
• Data & AI

Writing Clinical Trial Documentation, General Proofreading & Editing, Translation

Research Market Research, Feasibility Study, Fact Checking, Scientific and Technical Research, Secondary Data Collection

Consulting Scientific and Technical Consulting

Data & AI Predictive Modeling, Statistical Analysis, Image Processing, Image Analysis, Data Visualization, Big Data Analytics, Data Mining, Data Cleaning, Data Processing, Data Insights

Work Experience

Graduate Research Assistant / Research Assistant

University of Turku

July 2021 - August 2024

Education

Master’s Programme in Computing Sciences - Data Science

Tampere University

August 2019 - June 2024

Bachelor’s Degree Programme in Environmental Engineering

Tampere Polytechnic - Finland

August 2010 - June 2014

Certifications

• Certification details not provided.

Publications

JOURNAL ARTICLE

Chouaib Benchraka, Janina Hieta, Katariina Pärnänen, Noora Houttu, Kati Mokkala, Mrunalini Lotankar, Eeva-Leena Kataja, Leo Lahti, Kirsi Laitinen (2025). Perinatal depressive and anxiety symptoms are associated with gut microbiota in pregnant women with overweight and obesity . Brain, Behavior, & Immunity - Health.

Chouaib Benchraka, Mrunalini Lotankar, Noora Houttu, Leo Lahti, Kirsi Laitinen (2025). Links between gut microbiota with specific serum metabolite groups in pregnant women with overweight or obesity . Nutrition, Metabolism and Cardiovascular Diseases.

Chouaib Benchraka, Robert F.J. Kullberg, Irina Wikki, Bastiaan W Haak, Anni Kauko, Henrike Galenkamp, Hessel Peters-Sengers, Joe M Butler, Aki S Havulinna, Joonatan Palmu, et al. (2024). Association between butyrate-producing gut bacteria and the risk of infectious disease hospitalisation: results from two observational, population-based microbiome studies . The Lancet Microbe.

Chouaib Benchraka, Noora Houttu, Mrunalini Lotankar, Ella Muhli, Harri Niinikoski, Leo Lahti, Kirsi Laitinen (2023). Gut microbiota composition and function in pregnancy as determinants of prediabetes at two-year postpartum . Acta Diabetologica.

Chouaib Benchraka, Ella Muhli, Mrunalini Lotankar, Noora Houttu, Harri Niinikoski, Leo Lahti, Kirsi Laitinen (2023). Aberrations in the early pregnancy serum metabolic profile in women with prediabetes at two years postpartum . Metabolomics.