Meet Laura, a Bioinformatics Team Leader who has been with Fios for almost three and a half years. Laura originally joined us as a bioinformatician back in April 2018 and quickly progressed to her current line management role. We can’t imagine Fios without her!

My Journey To Fios

I did a BSc in Mathematics, followed by an MSc in Applied Mathematical Sciences at Heriot-Watt University. My masters degree included courses in biological and ecological modelling, which turned out to be the parts that interested me the most. After a brief stint as a statistician at HMIe (the executive agency of the Scottish Government responsible for school inspections at the time), I decided to go back to academia.

I did a PhD in the Department of Informatics at King’s College London; followed by post-docs in the Department of Chemical Engineering at UCL and Cancer Research UK Manchester Institute. Throughout, my research focussed on complex networks, the development of tools for analysing complex networks as well as their application to networks generated from biological data. Following this, I started working at Fios Genomics, giving me the opportunity to broaden my knowledge of bioinformatics – with the added bonus of bringing me back to my home town of Edinburgh.

My Role

I was a Bioinformatician at Fios for around two years before moving to my current role as Bioinformatics Team Leader. My responsibilities include line management, overseeing projects that have been assigned to my team, reviewing reports before they go to clients, scoping out the analysis for up-coming projects, as well as communicating with clients.

What Is The Most Challenging Aspect Of Your Role?

At Fios we tackle a particularly wide range of projects. However, this makes the job exciting and keeps things interesting – I continually have the opportunity to learn about something new; this could be a new data type, statistical model, organism or disease.

What Do You Enjoy Most About Working At Fios?

It’s the people at Fios that make the job so enjoyable. I’m looking forward to getting back into the office with them after working from home for the last year and a half.

Do You Have Any Pawleagues?

I have a cat called Tygra. He’s around 9 years old but he came to live with us 3 years ago. He is the noisiest cat I have ever known and like all cats, he is a fan of boxes.

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