My recent focus has been learning molecular lab skills and conducting in-depth bioinformatic analyses. I have experience preparing and analysing whole-genome sequence and gene expression data using Pooled Sequencing, Genome-Wide Association Studies and Differential Gene Expression pipelines. My research experience spans experiment planning and insect rearing through to molecular wet lab processes, working safely with liquid nitrogen, and general project management in a lab setting. I am adept in R, Bash and Unix, familiar with various command line tools like SLURM workload manager, and well-practised with running parallel jobs on high-powered computing systems. Another area I continue to nourish from my background is front and back-end web development.
Before attending university, I spent over a decade in web development and led a team of developers and designers for seven years. The strong programming and visual communication skills I developed have been an asset to my research career, as has my experience with server admin, version control, database management, and delivering at pace. During my undergraduate studies in biology, I gained broad laboratory, field, and statistical skills. I also learnt how to create agent-based models, which I used to ask questions about the evolution of polyploidy in plants. During that time, I freelanced on a range of interesting projects, which began to tie my technical experience with my new skills in biology; I made teaching tools with interactive population models in Shiny, contributed to R package development (resevol), and incorporated evolutionary models into research games.
Using games as research and decision-making tools is an area that continues to interest me. Alongside my PhD, I am the Director of Myreton Ltd, which focuses on creative and intellectual programming briefs. A recent collaboration presents a workshop tool designed to stimulate learning and discussion amongst government officials who have vital roles in achieving the 2030 sustainable development goals.
Recent Education
- 2020-current: Research PhD, University of Stirling.
- 2016-2020: BSc Hons Biology - first class, University of Stirling.
Molecular Lab Experience
- DNA and RNA preservation/extraction/purification
- Polymerase chain reactions (PCR and qPCR)
- Gel electrophoresis
Technical Languages
- R
- PHP
- JavaScript
- jQuery
- Ajax
- Angular
- SQL
- JSON
- Bash
- HTML
- CSS
- SCSS
- LaTeX
- Markdown
- C++