Maulik Shah - graduate Spring 2005 - pursued this degree while also employed full time at the Translational Genomics Research Insitute, and still completed all requirements within 2 years.
"After graduation I continued on as a Software Engineer at the Translational Genomics Research Institute. I used my coursework to pursue a variety of topics that included vetting microarray data with sequence data. I also wrote lab automation software that made use of databases from the European Bioinformatics Institute and algorithms written at MIT in order to save many hours of effort during a lung cancer study. "
"Wanted to keep you posted on my work and other details. As a Software
and Systems Analyst with the Dept. of Biostatistics at St.Jude
Children's Research Hospital, I work as part of 6-member computing team
that perform varied set of duties. Most of my work deals with the
Pediatric Brain Tumor Consortium (www.pbtc.org)
which was formed by the National Cancer Institute in 1999 to improve
cancer related treatment in children. 10 different hospitals are part of
this consortium. The main hub of this consortium is what is known as the
Operations and Biostatistics Center (OBC) that is located at St.Jude in
our department. I work with other members of the OBC to develop and
maintain software applications and systems. We deal with incoming data
from different member hospitals. This data may be neuro imaging studies
or clinical trials related stuff. All these institutes are testing
children with new therapeutic drugs and various parameters such as lab
tests results, toxicity related information, adverse events etc. need to
be monitored. I do a bit of image processing, database maintenance, web
applications development and other IT related stuffs to ensure smooth
functioning of the several systems in place to facilitate the mission of
the consortium. The other part of my job is related to research
assistance. There are around 10 faculty members who perform their own
research and also collaborate with other departments within the
hospital. I am currently working with the Microarray analysis group
within the department comprising of 2 faculty members and 2
biostatisticians. We are currently working on the analysis of SNP array
chips that comprise of nearly 500,000 SNP probes. I assist them in
implementing computational methodologies when things cannot be done in a
straight forward manner using standard software such as SAS or Splus."
"All these tasks (add a few weekly meetings now and then) keep me
reasonably busy 5 days a week and provide me with a good opportunity to
learn something new."
*Mr. Eric Kennedy* obtained a B.S. (in Molecular and Cellular Biology) from the University of Arizona, Tucson in 2001. The following year he completed a B.A. (in Applied Mathematics) at the same institution. After earning the P.S.M. in Computational Biology, which included a thesis involving the development of an online tool for locating bioinformatics-related software, he became an instructor in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at Arizona State University. In teaching courses such as algebra, trigonometry, probability, statistics, and calculus, he makes extensive use of the Internet both as a vehicle for disseminating information and as a forum for student interaction. Recently, Mr. Kennedy joined the interdisciplinary team working to improve the quantitative training of students in the Life Sciences, funded by NIH through the MARC grant. He brings recent experience in both biology and mathematics, which is exceedingly beneficial for the development of all lower level course materials and the training of graduate students and instructors on reform teaching approaches. For more information on his activities, review his web site http://math.asu.edu/~kennedy
Background:
I had a computer science background before joining the CBS
Program at ASU; got my Bachelors degree in Engineering from Mumbai
(Bombay) University, India (June 2003) and my major was Information
Technology.
Experience at CBS program:
Apart from the required coursework (CBS 520, 530, 521, Biostatistics,
Experimental design, and the business and ethics classes) I took the
following electives:
- Data Mining
- Functional Genomics
- Molecular Genetics
- Bioinformatics
- Algorithms for Systems Biology
Also, the CBS 521 group project was a good opportunity to work with
real life problems in the field. My project was with the TGen brain
tumor unit and involved performing Image analysis in time lapse videos
of tumor cells which was a challenging experience.
I was also research assistant with Dr. Zoe Lacroix at the Scientific
Data Management lab (http://bioinformatics.eas.asu.edu) for two years
which gave me the opportunity to work on some very interesting
projects and present our work at several scientific conferences in the
US and abroad. My major project at the lab was BioNavigation, which
also served as my MS internship.
Current job:
I started working as Ontology Engineer at Ingenuity Systems
(www.ingenuity.com) in February 2006. Ingenuity products include
pathways analysis software and knowledge bases for biologists and
bioinformaticians, and enterprise knowledge management infrastructure,
content and services for leading pharmaceutical and biotech companies.
I work with a cross-functional team composed of biologists, ontology
engineers and software engineers that develops and maintains the
ingenuity knowledge base. My background in computer science, the
knowledge I gained at the CBS program and the experience with ontology
in the BioNavigation project are proving very valuable for my work
here.
Some thoughts about the program:
CBS program is ideal in that it is truly interdepartmental with the
participation of mathematics, life sciences and business schools,
although it could use more involvement of the engineering school,
especially computer science. Perhaps the two new PhD offerings will
see greater success.
I would like to thank all the faculty and in particular Dr. Renaut and
Dr. Lacroix for their guidance and support. I wish my classmates and
future graduates of the program all the best!
