Intro post?

[yvi]

Let's have the standard who are you and why are you here round, shall we? :)

Comments

[yvi]

Yvi, 25, BSc in Biology with a thesis on evolutionary speed in a group of plant transcription factors, working towards a MSc in Biology with a thesis on evolution of dscam (gene involved in axon guidance and potentially insect immunity) across the tree of life.

I have mainly done sequence analysis for the last three years, with a bit of a former focus on evolutionary speed and a recent focus on phylogeny. I really enjoy doing phylogeny, and also just generally coding: I work with Python/Biopython at university and do Perl-based coding for Dreamwidth.

My dream is to work in a biology lab as the bioinformatic person. I can do coding in Perl, Python, and various bits in Java, but have also done things to do with user support and web design & administration.

[janinedog]

I'm Janine, and I majored in Biology and minored in Computer Science for my Bachelor (of Arts) degree. I technically did the evolution/ecology track, but I did do an independent study for one of my professors that involved more bioinformatics. I used Perl to determine the rate that new species of fungi were being discovered and entered into GenBank.

I didn't actually use my degree in a job until this year, when I got a job at a biotech company that studies plant genes to make crops that are more resilient (and to hopefully make biofuels too). I'm doing programming, but not really bioinformatics...I'm doing LIMS development (specifically, processing log files from laboratory robots), plus web interfaces for viewing and manipulating data and for supporting stuff like a way to order lab media and seed stocks and such.

I hope to learn some stuff here! :)

[mrcreek]

Hi, I'm MrCreek. I majored in Biological Sciences and got a PhD in Zoology. I am now a post-doc. I am especially interested in detecting natural selection with molecular data and thus determining which genetic differences between individuals or species are adaptive, and which are neutral. I mostly focus on the population genetic level within species or between closely related species. I've worked on a variety of animals, and I'm currently focusing on humans because of the extensive data available in humans: whole genome-scale datasets, like exomes or SNP data, from many individuals in each of several populations. I have a fair amount of experience with phylogenetics, too.

My favorite programs are DnaSP, PAML, phylip, BioEdit, and many others. I have just learned Perl, my first programming language, in the past year, and I now use it extensively. I'm also trying to learn R. My graduate work was all done on Windows, but my post-doc lab uses Macs, and I'm still learning to compensate for PC software that isn't available or works differently on Macs (I'm not trying to say that one platform or the other is better, just that I have less experience doing biology on Macs).

[ase]

Hi! I got my B.Sci in biology, then went to work as a wet bench tech. Now I want to make computers do my work for me and apply to grad school. My short-term bioinformatics goals are to learn perl, and maybe find a way to apply it to sample management at work. If someone ever builds a commercial LIMS that doesn't suck, they will make a fortune.