A Day in the Life: Informaticians bridging tech and genomics

Informatics involves using data to solve complex problems. As the world becomes increasingly data-driven, informaticians play a crucial role in supporting organisations across diverse sectors. Informatics is a broad field encompassing data analysis, computer science and information systems to aid decision-making and develop new technologies.

The Wellcome Sanger Institute, renowned for high-throughput genomic sequencing, hosts over 90 petabytes of biological data. Informatics is essential to interpreting these data, finding patterns and devising innovative solutions to biological challenges. This dynamic field offers many career opportunities, especially given the recent rise of generative AI and machine learning.

Tech Talent at the Sanger Institute

The Sanger Institute’s collaborative and interdisciplinary environment is ideal for scientists interested in both biological science and informatics. We offer an exciting programme of rotating work placements to support early-career scientists to find their ideal career path through the Tech Talent Scheme.

One recent Tech Talent Scheme winner is Ene Göktan, who joined the Institute in 2022. During her BSc in Biomedical Science at the University of Birmingham, Ene discovered an opportunity for a year’s placement in computer science. This was during the time people in the UK were told to stay home to avoid COVID-19, which gave Ene a chance to reflect on her career interests.

“That’s when I realised I was more interested in the computational work, rather than the wet lab.

“I really enjoyed seeing how things were built, the technologies, the theory… But I also liked the biological sciences. I was very interested in getting a feel for what direction to take in my career. So I was really happy when I got onto the Tech Talent Scheme.”

Ene Göktan,
Tech Talent Scheme Winner and Informatics and Digital Associate, Wellcome Sanger Institute

The scheme is awarded for two years and provides three work placements, each lasting nine months, which rotate around key IT and informatics teams. Applicants typically have a degree in computer science or equivalent knowledge and can express their research preferences. Ene’s three placements spanned the Informatics and Digital Solutions team, as well as the Tree of Life and Human Genetics research programmes.

Finding a path in computational science

Ene first joined the Pipeline Solutions programme, which provides storage and access to data produced by the Institute’s large-scale DNA sequencing facility. In this exciting and challenging role, she worked closely with both the Sanger Institute’s research programmes and scientific operations. Ene contributed to preparing a bespoke laboratory information management system (LIMS) for the Pacific Biosciences Revio sequencer, one of the cutting-edge DNA sequencing technologies used at the Sanger Institute (see Genomics gets faster, cheaper, and more accurate).

Her next placement was in a software development team supporting the Tree of Life research programme. This role involved writing and maintaining core software used by the team using Python and JavaScript. Ene found this role to be an interesting contrast to her first placement because she learnt more about the data needs of an individual research team.

Ene is especially proud of her contribution to the Tree of Life portal. This platform collates all specimen and sample information to help researchers analyse every species that has its genome sequenced as part of an ambitious project to determine the DNA code of all complex life. It provides interactive data visualisations to enable scientists to generate reports. Ene’s role was to collect the existing data from different systems and to transform the data to make it viewable and comparable in the Portal. Ene also helped to add features and enhancements, and fix bugs.

Tree of Life Portal

Bioinformatics and new tech

Software development focuses on building computer programmes and applications, but Ene was also keen to gain some bioinformatics experience, which requires scientific understanding to extract meaningful insights from the data. Ene is currently just a few weeks into her final placement with the Human Genetics Informatics team. She is looking forward to assessing a new version of a sequencing machine to help the team decide whether to upgrade.

During her placements, Ene found the technical aspects the most challenging, especially learning so many new technologies in a limited time. However, the teams provided Ene with the freedom and space to research and learn the tools through hands-on experience. This will enhance her future career in informatics given the constant deluge of new technologies available. And whilst many of the other Tech Talent Scheme winners have a computational background, Ene’s biological knowledge put her in a good position to understand the data.

At the end of this placement, all Tech Talent scheme winners are guaranteed a full-time position at the Sanger Institute, which they apply and interview for.

Collaboration and innovation

The highlight of Ene’s experience at the Sanger Institute was working collaboratively with people in different teams and across disciplines. Ene enjoyed experiencing how each group works together, seeing how the data move between them and learning the individual requirements of each team. This gave her a deeper understanding of how software development and bioinformatics underpin genetic research.

She also appreciated seeing the differences in the ways that each team operates. For example, when Ene joined Sanger’s Informatics and Digital Solutions team she was introduced to Agile, which provides a framework for software development. When she joined Tree of Life, she found that the team used Scrum, which is an Agile framework, to suit their specific tasks.

The scheme actively fosters collaborations by providing the Tech Talent winners with mentors from across the Institute. Ene also discovered many opportunities for informal mentoring whilst working in each team.

Sanger Institute Tech Talent Scheme Winners 2022. From left to right: Zaynab Butt, Ash Holland, Gabriela Ruao Pires, Luke Wilson, Tomiwa Bakare, Ronnie Crawford, and Ene Göktan.

Reflections and the future

Ene found the teams she worked with very welcoming and provided ample opportunities to develop her interests, learn new technologies and contribute to their work. A pleasant surprise for Ene was having the chance to work closely with the users of the resources she worked on, which benefitted her ability to develop software guided by their needs.

Applications for the latest round of the Tech Talent scheme are open for a limited time.

“I think the top three things that would make someone a suitable candidate for the scheme are curiosity, a willingness to learn and being quick to adapt to new technologies.”

Ene Göktan

Informatics is transforming many areas of biological science and medicine. From technological advancements in systems biology, personalised medicine, AI and machine learning, to integrated omics data, many new career opportunities will be on the horizon.