Senior Bioinformatician @ Earlham Institute

Hello there!

My names is Gill (pronounced “Jill”) and I use the pronouns she/her. I am currently a senior bioinformatician at the Earlham Institute where I am a member of the Swarbreck “Core Bioinformatics” group who have developed all of these wonderful programs. My primary research interests are developing scalable and explainable bioinformatics methods and programs for large and complex datasets, like crop genomes and I have a particular soft spot for polyploids and k-mer and graph-based algoritms which fortunately for me, often go hand-in-hand. I have an individual interdiscplinary PhD in computer science and plant genetics from Montana State University where I was extremely fortunate to have a fabulous set of supervisors (Dr. Jennifer Lachowiec & Dr. Brenan Mumey) and committee members (Dr. Veronika Strnadova-Neeley & Dr. Jamie Sherman) who encouraged and fostered my love of interdicplinary bioinformatics work.

Alongside my love of polyplpoids, graphs and k-mers I do enjoy working with a variety of biological organisms and data types and I’m a huge fan of compositional-based RNA-seq analysis. I also have plenty of experience with machine learning and I’m a 2023/2024 advisory member for AI for Global Goals. I also love teaching and have been fortunate enough to have held lecturships at my undergraduate and masters alumni The University of Worcester which I credit with fostering my independent yet collaborative nature by allowing me to persue bioinformatics as a research and teaching topic. Dr.Mike Wheeler is particularly resposible for setting me on the path to become a bioinformatician.

Outside of work I’m a Strong Woman competator, DragonBoat racer and mother which keeps me very busy! I am also a huge mental health advocate. I personally suffer from anxiety and PTSD-sp which I am very open about with the aim or normalizing mental health challenges so people don’t feel the need to suffer in silence. If you wish to contact me the best way is via my EI e-mail (linked above) unless the query is regarding a particular program I’ve written and released in which case please open an Issue on the GitHub page.