User:Dsobral

I have a background in Informatics Engineering, with a specialization in Artificial Intelligence. After my masters, I felt that artificial intelligence could not explain the nature of life, and thus I decided to learn more about biology by applying to the Gulbenkian PhD program in Biomedicine. During my PhD I worked in a resource for the ascidian research community that integrates a multitude of biological data to provide a global, systemic, view of ascidian development. During my work, I could get familiar with a wide diversity of biological data, how to represent and integrate these data, and how to make it available for the scientific community. During my PhD, I had to interact frequently with biologists generating the data, curators inserting and verifying the correctness of the data, and collaborate with programmers to implement the necessary functionality.

After my PhD, I decided to continue working in a community resource, and I was fortunate to be accepted in the ENSEMBL project at the EBI. In ENSEMBL, large volumes of genome information, gene annotation, epigenetic information and variation data are seamlessly integrated and displayed through a web interface. Here, I deepened my knowledge in the diversity and interoperability of biological data, particularly regarding epigenetics and high throughput sequencing data analysis. I also experienced a large collaborative production environment, with rigorous specifications and tight deadlines.

Finally, in 2012, I took the challenge to come to the IGC and assist the local research community in coping with the sequencing revolution. In my current position, I collaborate in a multitude of projects involving high throughput sequencing, including genomics, transcriptomics and epigenetics, reference-based and denovo, in both prokaryotes and eukaryotes. I offer consulting in all steps of the project, from design to data analysis.

Since 2014, I'm heading the Bioinformatics Unit at IGC.