Saturday, March 24, 2007

To the Heart of Bioinformatics


There are some things in life that are driven by instinct. This blind instinct has no reason but still has a lot of significance in somebody’s life. You will have a constant feeling like this, “I don’t know why, but still I feel that this is going to be mine”. It happened to me during my school days. For some reason I always wanted to be study in VIT. I did not know why. When I first encountered the name Bioinformatics, for some reason I liked it, which is why I selected it in the first place ahead of biotechnology. The same instinct stuck me with another name called EBI.

I was in the 2nd year of college when i first heard of the European bioinformatics institute [EBI]. It was actually in a bioinformatics training institute in Bangalore when its head spoke of how we have great future in places like NCBI, EBI, and EMBL etc. It got stuck in my mind since then. It was always a dream to be a part of EBI. Now I’m not saying here that I got a job in EBI. But I had a chance to visit EBI and Sanger’s Institute in Cambridge for EBI open day. But then, there’s an old saying that fits in the bill here. WELL BEGIN IS HALF DONE. You’ll never know!! Sanger’s Institute and EBI stood in the middle of nowhere in Cambridge. It’s a very quiet place to be in work. Dream place if you want to be a researcher. They have all the facilities inside their campus. Cafeterias, Gym, Sports Field, Park, Lake, you name it and they have it.

Me and 5 of my friends set of early morning from Brighton in a train. In a 15 min uphill walk to the station we were encountered by snowfall. What a perfect start for the day!!! I had a burning desire to be in semi formals on that day. That compounded my shivering. But again, if u got to have some, u got to lose some. Nevertheless, we were in the EBI campus well ahead of schedule. After a typical English breakfast, we were off for a little tour of the Sanger’s institute, home of the human genome project. We were briefed about the history and happenings of the place. We were able to see the EBI database and the sequencing machines as well. Then it was time for some conference in which we dozed off, literarily. Selva had to wake us up every time we dozed off. One reason is I had a night out, so I’m obviously tired. The other reason is that all the speakers were so boring (for that sake which speaker is interesting in any conference!!). The best part is the breaks where we got to meet a few other students and the ones who spoke as well. At least they were not that boring in a one on one conversation. I also had a chance to speak with Mr. Tim French, Asst manager with Astra Zeneca. He gave an industrial perspective on bioinformatics and his company’s recruitment needs. That was indeed helpful. With that it was all over for the day. Looks pretty simple and boring day but the sheer experience of being in the heart of bioinformatics and talking to a few good men made that day very special. Let’s see if my instinct lands me in the EBI. That’s quite a long way to go and worth another posting.
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