Specialists who use computational, data analytical and data mining techniques which are applied to a range of problems in the life sciences.
Occupational Profile
Bioinformaticians are scientists – specialists who use computational, data analytical and data mining techniques which are applied to a range of problems in the life sciences, for example, in pharmaceutical companies in the process of drug discovery and development. Roles require scientists who understand life sciences, and who can work computationally with diverse and large volumes of data derived from different life science activities – and role names and descriptions often reflect this by using slightly different names for what is broadly the same computational skill-set. For example, bioinformatics, computational biology, computational toxicology, Health informatics, Medical informatics, Agri-informatics. This range of titles reflect the importance of life-science-specific knowledge coupled with the underlying (and sometimes specifically-adapted) data science, statistics and computational skills.
Broadly, bioinformatics is: Research, development, or application of computational tools and approaches for expanding the use of life science, (inc. biological, chemical or health) data, including those to acquire, store, organise, archive, analyse, or visualise such data; in such a way that aids development and application of data-analytical and theoretical methods, mathematical modelling and computational simulation techniques to the study of such biological systems.
A bioinformatician is often part of a collaborative group or team of scientists, drawing together life scientists, statisticians and computational infrastructure specialists. Consequently, the bioinformatician must be able to work across these disciplinary boundaries. The main duties of such a role would include the ability to:
- Work as part of an interdisciplinary team to support life science experiments from the design stage through to data analysis and biological interpretation.
- Develop suitable plans for the storage and management of biological data, including annotation and metadata, and implement these through upload to public repositories and/or implementation of local databases.
- Work with private and/or public bioinformatics resources, taking into consideration the legal, ethical or confidentiality aspects of their use.
- Critically evaluate raw biological data and prepare it for suitable analysis.
- Determine the most suitable method for computational analysis, considering biological and experimental relevance, and where necessary build and test analytical pipelines or write and test new algorithms.
- Analyse biological data and to interpret the result in the context of the experimental design and, where necessary, in a broader biological context through integration with complimentary (often public) data.
- Carry out all data handling, processing and analysis with consideration of commercial practices and guidance including documentation, reproducibility regulated processes and intellectual property (IP).
- Communicate the results and their context to interdisciplinary scientific peers and participate in dissemination through writing papers and giving talks. Further aid the understanding of others through supervision and training.
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