Genomics Facility-Next Generation DNA Sequencing

Sadly for QBI, Dr. Sam Lukowski resigned on March 23rd and has a taken up his first post-doctoral position at the University of Geneva, Switzerland. We wish Sam and his wife Prue the very best in their venture overseas and thank him for his enormous contribution to the Genomics Facility at QBI, from September 2011.

Dr. Denis Bauer is leaving QBI’s sequencing facility as the postdoctoral research fellow in bioinformatics. We wish her all the best at her new position at CSIRO (Sydney, Mathematics, Informatics and Statistics).

QBI has successfully recruited a fantastic Bioinformatician for the sequencing facility: Zong-Hong Zhang.

Zong–Hong completed her Bachelor degree in Computer Science (software development) in Deakin University in Melbourne and a Bachelor degree in Medicine from China. She then went on to receive her master degree in science from the school of computing of National University of Singapore by Bioinformatics Research. Since then, she worked in bioinformatics research for about 7 years before joining QBI.
Her previous projects include protein sequence analysis for functional specialization, database establishment and maintenance, and web server development, microarray data analysis by data mining. She has more than 10 publications in bioinformatics research.

With her extensive experience in both bioinformatics research and IT-administration, Zong-Hong will be a key contributor towards answering neuroscience-specific research questions using NGS data.

Vikki Marshall (University of Queensland, Brisbane) was today (1st October 2011) appointed as the new Vice President of AMATA (Australasian Microarray and Associated Technologies Association). She relieves Dr. Daniel Catchpoole from The Children’s Hospital at Westmead, Sydney and is very much looking forward to shaping the direction of AMATA’s future involvement in genomic technologies.

May 2012

AMATA changes its ‘long name’ from “Australasian Microarray and Associated Technologies Association” to Australasian Genomics Technologies Association” to more accurately reflect its role in the rapidly changing genomics arena, switching much of its focus to 2nd Generation DNA Sequencing (2GS) technologies. The acronym “AMATA” however shall remain for branding and legal reasons.

QBI has organized a bioinformatics seminar series to give our researchers a better understanding of bioinformatics, specifically with respect to second generation sequencing data production and analysis. It is advised that all groups planning to use the sequencer send a member to these seminars to give them a better understanding of time frames, analysis steps and the research contribution that they can expect from the bioinformatics analysis for their projects.
Along with the seminar series, there will be a “walk-in-clinic” set up where you can ask bioinformatics questions and get some of the smaller tasks solved directly.
The seminar series and subsequent “walk-in-clinic” will be Thursdays 10am starting from the 16th June, further announcements will be made closer to the date.