I'm Ian Henry the Bioinformatics Service leader at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics (MPI-CBG) here in Dresden Germany. 

Background

I'm originally from South Shields, a town in north east England near to Newcastle.  I studied at the Royal Grammar School (RGS) in Newcastle and that is where I found my love of Science.  My academic background is firstly in Molecular Biology and Genetics with a BSc (Hons) in Molecular Biology from the University of Edinburgh and a PhD in Genetics/Bioinformatics from the University of Nottingham.

Expertise

Throughout my PhD I developed my Perl coding skills and learnt how to use R for graphing my data.  I'm an expert in bacterial codon usage analysis and contructing phylogenies (PhD work).  Since joining the MPI-CBG I have become involved in a wide variety of projects such as NGS data anlysis for which we mainly use R/Bioconductor packages.  I now mainly code in Python although can turn my hand to Java when required.  In the service we use a wide variety of open source bioinformatics tools and databases.

Hobbies

I've recently begun to run again and completed the Great North Run 2010.  I plan to run this half-marathon again in 2011 and am currently training for the event.  I also enjoy tenpin bowling when possible and was a member of a league whilst in the UK.  During my time at the University of Nottingham I became involved in conservation work in the Peak District National Park.  For my sins, I also support Newcastle United Football Club.