After five years at Deakin University I’m excited to announce that I will take on a new position at Burnet Institue as Head of Bioinformatics.
Deakin has been very good to me and has supported me throughout this time. At Deakin I was a Lecturer and Senior Lecturer in Biotechnology and Bioinformatics. In that role I was teaching primarily into the Masters of Biotechnology and Bioinformatics course, with some additional undergraduate units. I completed a Graduate Certificate in Higher Education, which helped me to become a better teacher. I also maintained a research group which became increasingly focused on bioinformatics. There was a restructure, and I became Course Director of Master of Biotechnology and Bioinformatics. At about the same time the course enrolments were paused for an overhaul of the curriculum and course design which I was deeply involved in. Over time, my time was taken up mostly by teaching and administration, and time for research had a low priority which did not agree with me.
The new role at Burnet is a dream job for me because I feel that my strengths in teaching, training and supervision can be applied for maximum benefit to build bioinformatics capacity at this world-leading institute. There are organisations that are seeing that data analysis capabilities are going to be essential to maintaining competitiveness, and those that invest in this area are going to be at the forefront of what they do, whether that is in business or research.