1. Bioinformatics Career Day 2012
Shinichi Sunagawa
Bork Group
www.sunagawa.de
EMBL Heidelberg
EBI / DKFZ: Bioinformatics Career Day – 24 May 2012

2. Current Role
Since Jan 2012 (after 1.5 years postdoc)
• Research Scientist at Bork Group: Computational Biology
- Network biology
- Comparative genomics
- Metagenomics
• Responsibilities
- coordinate / manage metagenomics projects
Qin et al. 2010, Nature; Arumugam et al. 2011, Nature Karsenti et al. 2011, PLoS Biology
- support progress of PhD students and postdocs
- own research projects
EBI / DKFZ: Bioinformatics Career Day – 24 May 2012

3. Background / atypical career path?
Diploma - Biochemistry
MSc / PhD - Aquatic Ecology / Quantitative and Systems Biology
Started programming in 2006
PhD 2010
EBI / DKFZ: Bioinformatics Career Day – 24 May 2012

4. Today and outlook
Typical activity
- using and developing programs to analyze DNA sequencing data
What attracted me to this position?
• exciting projects
• from data generation to data analysis
• diversification of skill-set
• springboard to independent researcher
What do I enjoy most about my job?
• perspective to find out something useful
Two cents for future bioinformaticians:
• in many, if not most areas of biology, computers keep gaining importance
EBI / DKFZ: Bioinformatics Career Day – 24 May 2012