Key Takeaways from Chat
- There are multiple routes to success. Some routes might take a while, but the journey is worth it.
- Collaboration and networking are key; reach out and ask if someone is hiring and talk about your experience.
- Understand what drives you; passion is still important.
- Build your brand.
- Work with the right people.
- Technical skills like coding can get you the interview for a bioinformatics opportunity; transferable and soft skills like being open to learning and flexible are more likely to seal the deal.
- You can travel for fun and still do research by giving presentations.
About the Speaker
Natalie is a Senior Research Scientist and leads the Genome Insights team within CSIRO’s Transformational Bioinformatics Group. She is a recognised expert in her domain, with research achievements in population-scale genomics, complex genetic diseases, and precision medicine. She is passionate about developing technology to impact health and understand disease, and her work has been recognised through Telstra Health’s Brilliant Women in Digital Health award in 2022.
Natalie has built an international research career spanning 25 years in the fields of bioinformatics and genomics. Her undergraduate degree in molecular biology at the University of Cape Town led to a short stint as a wet lab scientist in genetics at University College London, followed by a Master’s degree in bioinformatics at Birkbeck College London. This provided her with formal training in bioinformatics after pivoting from wet lab work. She subsequently utilised microarray approaches to understand genetic drivers of leukaemia at Kings College London before moving to Sydney to pursue a PhD in bioinformatics at UNSW.
In Sydney, she worked with large-scale next-generation sequencing data to explore a range of phenotypes, including Alzheimer’s and bone disease. A strong theme throughout her career is collaborative research, and she spent 6 months of her PhD in my joint supervisor’s lab at Southern Denmark University. After a postdoc at UNSW, she joined CSIRO’s Transformational Bioinformatics group to work on motor neurone disease genomics and has subsequently set up her own genomics research team there. She will share her experiences of working across multiple countries on a broad range of areas in both human disease and bioinformatics and what drives her passion for understanding disease using technology.
Natalie is open to messages and collaboration with interested research students.