The PhD student will be involved in developing bioinformatics and statistics approaches to delineate the landscape of synonymous driver mutations in publically available cancer genomics datasets. Mutational effects on functional DNA or RNA elements will be assessed and integrated in a ranking of mutations according to their likeliness to be cancer drivers. Top candidate driver synonymous mutations will be experimentally tested for effects on gene expression and cancer cell behavior by colleagues in the lab, with special attention for mutations that are expected to affect novel modes of protein translation dysregulation, as our lab has extensive expertise in this field.