From owner-comp-bio@hgmp.mrc.ac.uk Thu Jun 21 08:22:29 2001 Return-Path: Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by mercury.hgmp.mrc.ac.uk (Postfix) with ESMTP id 9726717B9C for ; Thu, 21 Jun 2001 08:22:25 +0100 (BST) Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by mercury.hgmp.mrc.ac.uk (Postfix) with ESMTP id 79D3A17AF8 for ; Thu, 21 Jun 2001 08:22:14 +0100 (BST) Received: by mercury.hgmp.mrc.ac.uk (Postfix, from userid 6023) id 7751217B25; Thu, 21 Jun 2001 08:21:36 +0100 (BST) Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by mercury.hgmp.mrc.ac.uk (Postfix) with ESMTP id EBF0017ACF for ; Wed, 20 Jun 2001 23:30:03 +0100 (BST) Received: by mercury.hgmp.mrc.ac.uk (Postfix, from userid 60001) id 2D5DC17AC4; Wed, 20 Jun 2001 23:29:57 +0100 (BST) To: bionet-biology-computational@net.bio.net From: zaredbaron@yahoo.co.uk (=?iso-8859-1?q?Kevin=20Garwood?=) Newsgroups: bionet.biology.computational Subject: java developer wanting to pursue bioinformatics visualization - where to go? Organization: BIOSCI/MRC Human Genome Mapping Project Resource Centre Message-ID: <20010620222944.5715.qmail@web4306.mail.yahoo.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by mercury.hgmp.mrc.ac.uk (Postfix) with ESMTP id 1CC0A17ABD for ; Wed, 20 Jun 2001 23:29:54 +0100 (BST) X-Received: from web4306.mail.yahoo.com (web4306.mail.yahoo.com [216.115.104.198]) by mercury.hgmp.mrc.ac.uk (Postfix) with SMTP id 12D4A17ACF for ; Wed, 20 Jun 2001 23:29:46 +0100 (BST) X-Received: from [216.161.34.129] by web4306.mail.yahoo.com; Wed, 20 Jun 2001 23:29:44 BST X-To: comp-bio@net.bio.net Date: Thu, 21 Jun 2001 08:21:36 +0100 (BST) Sender: owner-comp-bio@hgmp.mrc.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Hello, I'm looking for information on a niche field I'd like to pursue -- visualization in bioinformatics. I am a skilled software developer who has worked on medical imaging, high energy physics and immunology applications. I've always been a fan of cool graphics and simple user interfaces. The more I look into this field, the more I realize that eventually, with all the data you collect, you're going to need something to visually marshall the facts in a way that doesn't cause cognitive overload. Whether you're doing some fantastically complex operations with GenBank files or you're trying to visualize proteins or molecules, you're going to need something to help you see it all better. The alternative future is one where the researchers end up turning into eggplants because they're incapable of translating the abstract into the concrete for all the data they get bombarded with. They'll need help! Please feel free to click on my resume: http://uk.geocities.com/zaredbaron/resume/resume.html. I've been working for a year in bioinformatics and I must say, either the field is very interesting in general or the place I work at is great. But I would ask generally, as a software developer who knew nothing of biology before: "Is the field of bioinformatics at a mature enough stage, and are the data 'clean' enough to warrant heavy research into graphically visualizing complex data?" I'd like to know, and I don't expect an answer to necessarily be a resounding 'Yes'. There seems to be a lot of scripts and programs that hang precariously together and try to process data from large scale databases where the data quality isn't as good as it could be. Could you please provide some thought on this issue, and suggest what research labs I might look to for opportunities? I'm looking into the Xerox Research Park an IBM's Deep Computing Institute, but could anyone add some other suggestions? Thanks very much, Kevin ____________________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get your free @yahoo.co.uk address at http://mail.yahoo.co.uk or your free @yahoo.ie address at http://mail.yahoo.ie --- .