Q: What does your job entail? What do you find exciting about it?

My role involves designing tools and resources for people to understand genetic variation affecting proteins. It is crucial that I consider the diverse needs of our users from bioinformaticians to clinicians so that each can get the data they need efficiently. In order to provide the highest quality and most relevant data it is my job to choose and verify information from every possible location and understand how it is derived and what it means. I also need to map data from many different sources to the relevant protein positions to allow users to find the data they need intuitively. Following my extensive experience in research my more general role is that of an adviser for others across UniProt on biological research questions.

I find the opportunity to reach a global audience with our tools and services to be exhilarating. It is satisfying to know that our work is used every day in real world scenarios from accelerating academic research to aiding the diagnosis of clinical patients.

Q: What attracted you to this role?

The opportunity to work with such a diverse group of people with different complementary skills and backgrounds was very attractive to me. I also liked the idea of helping to develop professional, supported tools which are freely available to all.

Q: How long have you been working here? 

I have been working for five months in my current role.

Q: What was your background before you joined the team?

Before this role I worked briefly with the PDBe on a project concerning ligand binding in proteins and before that I held a postdoctoral fellowship at the Sanger Institute and EBI investigating the effect of missense variation in rare genetic disorders. Prior to that I spent five years in Hawai’i and California as a postdoctoral fellow at NASA researching the origin of life.

Q: How have you integrated in the team?

It has certainly been trickier during lockdown and I am not convinced my colleagues are actually 3D! It is nice that we have daily virtual meetings so I feel I got to know everyone quite quickly. It is also stimulating to work through problems with colleagues virtually which makes it feel like we are in a physical office together.

Q: What do you like about working here?

There is such a wide range of talents from services and research at EBI but also the Sanger Institute and industrial partners on campus. Wider still we are part of the EMBL family with connections to great scientists across Europe and beyond. The campus itself is also beautiful and inspiring.

Q: What are some of the most interesting projects you worked on?

I am currently developing a variant mapping and interpretation tool which has the potential to impact a wide range of researchers and clinicians and potentially patients lives around the world. I am looking forward to presenting the resource over the coming year and helping people to realise its full potential.

Q: What advice would you give to someone who was applying for a similar role?

Take an interest in the bigger picture. Your specific skills will be useful but knowing how your work might fit in to the grander scheme is important in building bridges between disciplines so that everyone gains from new perspectives.