James Breen is a Bioinformatician & Chief Data Scientist at Black Ochre Data Labs, an Indigenous Genomics and public health research team co-funded by Telethon Kids Institute and Australian National University. In this Q&A talk, he discusses the non-traditional path he took to become a team leader in Bioinformatics, from starting off as a failed University science student and working multiple part-time jobs to building multiple data science groups in Adelaide. He has been privileged to work in many positions in Australia and Europe over the past 20 years, in industry, research, teaching and core-facilities roles across fields as diverse as plant genomics, host-pathogen interactions, viticulture, ancient DNA, reproductive biology, cancer research, precision healthcare, and now Indigenous genomics.
His diverse range of experiences has driven his passion for advocating for the work that we do in Bioinformatics and Computational Biology. He has been a member of the ABACBS National Executive Committee since 2018 and has been President of the society since 2020. He has first-hand experience with the highs and lows of computational research and teaching in Australia and shares insights on where he sees our industry developing in the future.