The research I have been working on is String Kernel Methods for DNA sequence analysis, under the supervision of Prof. Pavlovic. I focus on the problem of species-level identification based on short DNA fragments known as barcodes. Kernel methods approach classification by mapping original data into a set of points in the feature space that potentially makes it easier to detect complex relationship in the data. Thus, in turn, leads to learning algorithms that can exhibit higher classification accuracy and robustness.