Research

As Computational Biologists and Bioinformaticians we are excited about algorithms, databases, large-scale data analysis, and biological questions that can be addressed by "connecting the dots". Our group often works in collaboration with scientist of other areas such as microbiology, proteomics, or systems biology. However, we also run many projects of our own - developing and maintaining freely accessible online resources, creating algorithms and software packages, and running critical assessments of technologies and data collections. We maintain several large collections of "reference" data for others to compute with and benchmark against, and we enjoy receiving daily feedback from the large and growing community of scientists that use our tools.

Systems Biology / Metagenomics

Our group studies the genomes of entire microbial communities, based on the new and exciting metagenomics approach. Metagenomics describes a technique that encompasses the sampling of DNA directly from an environment; the DNA is then shotgun sequenced without prior knowledge of which  organisms are actually present.

Protein networks

Another research area that we are very interested in concerns protein-protein interactions, and the networks they form. We develop algorithms that help to score and integrate protein interaction data, and make them more easily accessible for researchers to search and browse via a freely accessible web-tool called STRING