User:Pfern
Pedro M. Lobo Fernandes (born in 1956) is the coordinator of both the GTPB Bioinformatics training programme and the Centro Português de Bioinformática at the Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência (IGC). Originally a graduate in electronic engineering (1979), his research experience touched several areas (Biomechanics, Biophysics, Physiology, Computational Biology and Bioinformatics) and covered a wide variety of themes such as electronic nerve cell analogues, development of laboratory instruments for research of the electrophysiology of epithelia, development of numerical models of biological systems, in particular compartmental models applied to epithelial transport, design and construction of electrophysiological instrumentation, etc. He participates regularly in collaborative projects with medical doctors and cell biologists.
In 1991 he moved to Bioinformatics. He created the Portuguese Node of the European Molecular Biology Network (EMBnet), a provider of Bioinformatics services to the medical and biological communities in Portugal. This node was in the center of a series of activities that basically led to the formation of the initial community of Bioinformatics users in Portugal, in close connection with similar communities in other countries. Currently this node has evolved into a High Performance Computing Center (60 nodes) that was installed with a grant from FCT (REEQ/741/BIO/2005).
Teaching activity: He runs the yearly Gulbenkian Training Programme in Bioinformatics (GTPB) that accepts international students and provided user skills at several levels to a total of more that 2600 people since 1999. His main contribution, as a permanent organiser and instructor, was the optimization of the training environment and methodology, steepening the rate of acquisition of practical skills. Nowadays, GTPB offers 15-20 training courses per year.
In 2000 he designed and started the first Portuguese Post-Graduate course in Bioinformatics (PGBIOINF) in collaboration with Mario Gaspar da Silva from the Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa (FCUL). This highly successful MSc/PhD course lasted only three years (2002-2005) during which more than 30 students acquired high qualifications in Bioinformatics, due to the direct contact with a very active faculty composed of well known, highly productive Bioinformaticians from the international community.
He regularly teaches in undergraduate and graduate courses at Portuguese universities. He also teaches Bioinformatics and Scientific Data Retrieval in several private universities and technical institutes.
