Richard Wilton

Richard Wilton

Associate Research Scientist

Contact Information

Research Interests: big data; bioinformatics

Education: MD, University of California, Los Angeles

Richard Wilton received his MD at UCLA, where he subsequently became an associate professor in general pediatrics with both clinical and research responsibilities.  His work involved software development for patient data tracking in clinical settings and for social services case management.

Dr. Wilton joined Alex Szalay's computing research group at Johns Hopkins in 2008.  He collaborated in the initial design and software implementation of the data archive for the PanSTARRS survey telescope.  More recently, his research has focused on performance optimization of algorithms for biological sequence alignment, on efficient archival and retrieval of DNA short read data, and on optimal integration of sequence alignment tools in genomic data analysis pipelines.

Wilton R, Szalay AS.  Short-read aligner performance in germline variant identificationBioinformatics.  2023;39(8). 

Eminizer M, et al.  Comparing and correcting spectral sensitivities between multispectral microscopes: a prerequisite to clinical implementationCancers.  2023;15(12),3109. 

Eagles NJ, et al.  BiocMAP: a Bioconductor-friendly, GPU-accelerated pipeline for bisulfite-sequencing dataBMC Bioinformatics.  2023;24. 

Wilton R, Szalay AS.  Performance optimization in DNA short-read alignment. Bioinformatics. 2022;38:2081-2087.

Perzel Mandell KA, et al.  Molecular phenotypes associated with antipsychotic drugs in the human caudate nucleusMolecular Psychiatry.  2022;4:2061-2067.

Berry S, et al.  Analysis of multispectral imaging with the AstroPath platform informs efficacy of PD-1 blockadeScience.  2021;372(6547):eaba26609. 

Perzel Mandell KA, et al.  Genome-wide sequencing-based identification of methylation quantitative trait loci and their role in schizophrenia riskNature Communications.  2021;12:5251. 

Perzel Mandell KA, et al.  Characterizing the dynamic and functional DNA methylation landscape in the developing human cortex. Epigenetics. 2021;16(1):1-13.

Wilton R, Szalay AS.  Arioc:  high-concurrency short-read alignment on multiple GPUsPLoS Computational Biology. 2020;16(11):e1008383.

Wilton R, et al.  The Terabase Search Engine:  a large-scale relational database of short-read sequencesBioinformatics.  2019;35(4):665–670. 

Wilton R, et al.  Arioc: GPU-accelerated alignment of short bisulfite-treated reads. Bioinformatics. 2018;34:1-3.

Wilton R, et al.  Arioc: high-throughput read alignment with GPU-accelerated exploration of the seed-and-extend search spacePeerJ.  2016. 

Szalay AS, et al.  GrayWulf:  scalable clustered architecture for data intensive computing42nd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences.  2009;1-10. 

Silva ME, et al.  Acute fever and petechial rash associated with influenza A virus infectionClinical Infectious Diseases.  1999;29:453-454.

Wilton R, Pennisi A.  Evaluating the Accuracy of Transcribed Computer-Stored Immunization DataPediatrics.  1994;94:902-906. 

Wilton R, Pennisi A.  Insurance Coverage and Residents' Experience in a Pediatric Teaching ClinicAmerican Journal of Diseases of Children.  1993;147:284-289.

Wilton R.  A Rule-Based Expert System as an Integrated Resource in an Outpatient Clinic Information SystemProceedings of the Fourteenth Annual Symposium on Computer Applications in Medical Care.  Washington DC: IEEE Computer Society; 1990;750-753. 

Books

Wilton R.  Your Mind Emerges.  (prepublication).

Wilton R.  Windows Developer's Workshop.  Microsoft Press (1991).  ISBN 978‑1‑556‑15244‑3

Norton P, Wilton R.  New Peter Norton Programmer's Guide to the IBM PC & PS/2.  Microsoft Press (1988).  ISBN 978‑1‑556‑15131‑6

Wilton R.  Programmer's Guide to PC & PS/2 Video Systems.  Microsoft Press (1987; 2nd ed. 1994).  ISBN 978‑1‑556‑15103‑3