Please see our Contact Details page for email addresses

Marek Gierlinski:

Marek was born and educated in Poland. He graduated from the Jagiellonian University in Krakow and completed his PhD in astrophysics at N. Copernicus Centre in Warsaw. He moved to Durham in 2000 as a postdoc and stayed there until 2009 in a succession of research and teaching positions. His main interest there was weird astrophysical objects: black holes and neutron stars. 2009 marked a dramatic change in his career: switching to Bioinformatics. One huge step for a man…

Marek joined the DAG on 23rd March 2009

Nick Schurch:

Nick, like Marek, has also made the transition from astronomy to biology.  Nick studied for an MSci in physics at the University of Bristol, before completing his astrophysics Ph.D. at the University of Leicester.  Nick has had postdoc positions on three continents (Europe, USA and Asia) culminating with a UK-China Fellowshiop for Excellence with the Institute for High Energy Physics in Beijing, China, before joining the Data Analysis Group.  Nick has always had a strong interest in biology (despite studying physics) and is particularly looking forward to working in a field with more immediate relevance to the world!  Nick enjoys playing bridge and football and is a lifelong Liverpool fan and is also looking forward to improving on the (very) little Mandarin he picked up in China.

Nick joined the DAG on 1st May 2009

Pieta Schofield:

After working as a programmer and systems analyst for various finance sector companies, Pieta spent five years working as systems manager for the Parke-Davis Neuroscience Research Centre in Cambridge. She then returned to academia completing a PhD in mathematical biology at the University of Dundee in 2002. Since then she completed a Wellcome Trust Training Fellowship in Mathematical Biology, switching theoretical insects for the real thing.  Pieta joined the Data Analysis Group in January 2009 from the SCRI where she developed methods for thermographic detection of plant stress.

Pieta joined the DAG on 1st January 2009

Chris Cole:  Senior Bioinformatics Research Officer and founder member of the Data Analysis Group.

Before moving to Dundee, Chris worked with Simon Hubbard at the University of Manchester.

Chris left the bench after a traumatising
Ph.D. and has been 'doing' Bioinformatics ever since. In that time he has worked on protein-protein interface prediction, homology modelling, Prion protein structure analysis and various aspects of proteomics. Now in Dundee Chris works on a variety of projects, but mainly in the realm of protein structure. Under his remit in the Scottish Bioinformatics Research Network, Chris is always happy to discuss interesting problems which may have a Bioinformatics angle.
 

Chris joined the group on 1st Feb 2006 and then became the founding member of the Data Analysis Group.

David Martin    - Is the Post Genomics and Molecular Interactions Centre Bioinformatics Scientific Officer. David graduated with a degree in Chemistry from Kings College London in 1991. He completed a PhD in protein structure/function at the MRC Clinical Sciences Centre, Hammersmith  in Ted Tuddenham's group before taking up an EMBO postdoctoral fellowship in Oslo. An EU TMR fellowship as part of the GeneQuiz project allowed David to develop his bioinformatics skills and he took the position as Head of the Norwegian EMBNet node  at the University of Oslo in August 1999. Following his move to Dundee in March 2001 David has a broad responsibility to develop bioinformatics support, training and services for the emerging data intensive science that is going on in the School of Life Sciences.  David's scientific interests include genome annotation and data management. He has developed the GOtcha Tool which annotates sequences with GO term.  He also  collects genomes to annotate, preferably ones from nasty organisms such as Malaria and Sleeping Sickness. His interest is in improving the annotations, working out how to tell the annotations have improved (not as easy as you might think) and looking at these anntoations in a systems biology context.

His external interests seem to involve rebuilding cars, houses and boats when he isn't out in the mountains or enjoying family life.  He also plays the clarinet and saxophone but not as well as you'd want to be listening to.

Geoff Barton did his first degree in Biochemistry at the University of Manchester. He then did a Ph.D. supervised by Mike Sternberg in the Department of Crystallography, Birkbeck College, University of London before spending two years as an ICRF Fellow working with Chris Rawlings at the Imperial Cancer Research Fund Labs. in London. In 1989 he was awarded a Royal Society University Research Fellowship to work in the Lab of Molecular Biophysics, University of Oxford. From April 1995 until October 1997, Geoff was also Head of Genome Informatics at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics.  

From 1st October 1997-July 2001 Geoff was a Research and Development Team Leader at the EMBL European Bioinformatics Institute.  

From 1st January 1998-July 2001 Geoff was also  head of the European Macromolecular Structure Database at EBI.  

From 30th March 2001 Geoff has been Professor of Bioinformatics at the School of Life Sciences, University of Dundee.  Geoff moved to Dundee full-time in July 2001 and is now co-director (with Mike Ferguson) of the Post Genomics and Molecular Interactions Centre.

Geoff spends his leisure time working with the Men in Black, and more recently -  The Three Musketeers.  Since July 2005 he has also discovered tennis.  After finding like-minded musical colleagues in the College of Life Sciences he has now revived his love of flute playing.