1. What is your current role?
PostDoc researcher at Human Phenome Institute, Fudan University and visiting scientist at Garvan Institute, Sydney. I work on somatic structural variant detection and annotation in cancer genomes.
2. How did you end up in bioinformatics?
My background actually is a bit different. I worked as an electrical engineer for several years. Considering to have a career change and my interest in mathematics and statistical modelling, I started a master of data science course at University of Sydney. I learnt “bioinformatics” in one of the machine learning courses and think it is a very interesting field. Then I had my first job in bioinformatics as a summer internship student in Joshua Ho’s lab at Victor Chang Cardiac Institute and also did a bioinformatics related capstone project in Vanessa Hayes’ lab (where I also did my PhD) at Garvan Institute.
3. One sentence to describe your experience with bioinformatics.
It is fun, sometimes painful.
4. Congratulations on finishing your PhD recently, Tingting! How have you found the transition from PhD to postdoc?
Thank you! It’s not easy, while very exciting to start my PostDoc in a different country. I’m now in a much bigger team than where I was. The first step then is to get to know the people and introduce myself. I’m very lucky to have the freedom to choose a project that I want to do. So I spent a lot of time chatting with different team leads, senior and junior researchers and very enjoyed it. I have now been working on a lung cancer project. Starting the Postdoc makes me think more about the design and scope of the project, and how to work with different collaborators involved.
5. What do you enjoy the most working on bioinformatics?
You can feel you have the power and keep developing the power to interpret large data and obtain value from it.
6. What motivates you to stay in this field?
What motivates me is what I’m doing can help to understand disease and influence patients’ treatment.
7. Any advice for the students who start to join the bioinformatics club?
Feel free to chat with others about your ideas, recent work, questions, or even concern about bioinformatics. COMBINE and ABACBS are great communities, where you can know more people and what they are doing, and share your work.
8. What do you like to do outside of work?
I like bushwalking with friends and family and cooking. While mostly babysitting now after having my baby in April.
Follow Tingting on Twitter @TingtingGong1!