About me

I currently work for the University of Newcastle upon Tyne as a Junior Research Associate/Bioinformatician. The main area of my research is focused on the mitochondrial disease Leber’s Hereditary Optic Neuropathy (LHON) and the application of bioinformatics to highlight disease gene candidates via the retrieval, integration and knowledge mining of distributed data.

After graduating in Applied Biology from Northumbria University I decided to stay in Newcastle. After more than a year of job hunting whilst slaving away in some soul destroying call centres I finally landed a job for a biotech company in the North East. I was employed as an Analyst mainly performing endless HPLC with the odd bit of PCR and sequencing in the genetics lab. It wasn’t long before I realised lab work was not something I could see myself doing for the rest of my career. It just didn’t appeal to me anymore. However, I was still fascinated by biology, mainly genetics and still wanted to pursue this field in some form.

After checking career supplements in New Scientist and Nature for new jobs and courses, a bioinformatics masters seemed like the perfect answer. So far so good. I really enjoyed the course and learnt a vast amount in a short space of time. Don’t get me wrong this was no holiday, some problems had me baffled for days even weeks resulting in me setting up camp in the computing room because it felt like there weren’t enough hours in the day. It was certainly worth it in the end.

On a lighter note Newcastle is a great place to live. The quayside is undergoing some major developments and the nightlife is getting better all the time. It has everything to offer depending on your interests. The Bigg Market is a popular choice for a cheap and boozy night on the town but my favourite places are in and around the Central Station area