I provide scientific support on various bioinformatics research projects, taking leadership roles in organizing large, collaborative projects (such as The Assemblathon). I also spend an increasing amount of time on projects relating to science communication, outreach, and training.
I helped redevelop the Genome Center website and now write all content on that site. My work for the Bioinformatics Core sees me helping write material for training workshops as well as presenting at those workshops.
I also helped develop a Graduate Student course that teaches a Unix & Perl 'Primer' to people who are new to programming enabled us to make that material freely available to everyone, which in turn gave us the opportunity to turn this material into a book. I now spend time on outreach efforts connected to the Primer and the book, and can often be found offering help on tbe Rescued by Code Google Discussion Group.
In all of these endeavors, It's been very satisfying to increasingly use social media tools as a way of interacting with other scientists and other interested parties. Apart from my own ACGT science blog and the Assemblathon blog, I have twitter accounts for myself, the Assemblathon, and for all things relating to Unix & Programming. It was therefore extremely gratifying to recently be nominated as one of the top genome scientists to follow on twitter (along with many other scientists at UC Davis). I was pleased to be featured in a recent itnerview with Front Line Genomics magazine (The Man Who Makes Bioinformatics Fun And Accessible For All).
I started out my academic career studying ecology. This involved lots of field trips and and throwing quadrats around on windy hillsides. I was then lucky to be in the right place at the right time to do a Masters degree in Bioinformatics (at a time when nobody was very sure what bioinformatics was).
From that point onwards I have spent most of my waking life sat at a keyboard (often staring into a Unix terminal). A PhD studying eukaryotic genome evolution followed; this was made easier by the fact that only one genome had been completed at the time he started (this soon changed). After a brief stint working on an Arabidopsis genome database, I moved to working on the excellent model organism database WormBase at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute.
It was here that I first met Ian Korf and we bonded over a shared love of Macs, neatly written code, and English puddings. Ian then tried to run away and hide in California at the UC Davis Genome Center but I tracked him down and joined his lab. Apart from doing research, I also get to look after all the computers in the lab and co-teach some Unix & Perl classes. However, I would give it all up for the chance to be able to consistently beat Ian at foosball, but that seems unlikely to happen anytime soon. I still likes Macs and neatly written code, but I now have a much harder job finding English puddings.
I seem to have my fingers in several different pies in the lab - Mmmm, pies - including, but not limited to:
See also my Google Scholar page, and my Impact Story page.
For questions or comments about the website, please e-mail:
korflab AT ucdavis DOT edu
Contact information for specific members of our lab can be found on their personal pages.