The data skills space in the UK is increasingly noisy with entities like ELIXIR-UK and BioFAIR trying to create coordinated national infrastructure and communities of practice. Data skills are essential to the modern biologist, and we need to make sure that York researchers, technical staff and students at all stages have the information and opportunities available to them - there is certainly a lot going on!
Andrew, Emma and Alastair decided to combine their efforts, bringing together their experience and views from research, teaching, training, consultancy and core provision. They are very fortunate to be within a Department and University which really acknowledges and appreciates the importance of these skills, and to represent the broader bioinformatics and data research community at York.
Find the current newsletter here.
Coordinating team
Dr Andrew Mason is a Lecturer in Cancer Informatics in the Biology Department and York Biomedical Research Institute and an ELIXIR-UK Data Stewardship Training Fellow. He is a member of the NorthernBUG steering committee, is the ELIXIR-UK steering committee member for York, and is on the Access Review Committee for the National Genomic Research Library (NGRL), managing access to Genomics England resources such as the 100,000 Genomes Project.
Professor Emma Rand is a Teaching & Scholarship Professor in the Biology Department and is the Computational and Data Science Skills Lead within the department. Emma is internationally renowned for her expertise in training and ongoing professional development, particularly in R where she has been an invited tutor at the useR, RStudio and Posit conferences and leads the R Foundation's international taskforce on under-represented groups. Emma leads the UKRI Digital Research Skills Catalyst and is a Software Sustainability Institute Fellow.
Dr Alastair Droop is the Data Science Lab Head within the York Bioscience Technology Facility, returning to York after his MSc, PhD and first postdoc here, followed by CRUK and MRC Bioinformatics Fellowships in Leeds, and 4 years as Principal Bioinformatician at the Sanger. Alastair has diverse experience in research and training across biological disciplines, in computational architecture and research computing.
Aims of Data@York
- Release a monthly newsletter highlighting data and bioinformatics meetings, training and opportunities at York and beyond.
- Increase Biology/YBRI/HYMS awareness of the Data Science Lab within the BTF.
- Support the renewed monthly Bioinformatics research meeting.
- Improve the York community’s awareness of (and involvement in) national programmes such as ELIXIR-UK and BioFAIR.
York Bioinformatics Meeting
These meetings are designed to create a community of researchers who apply bioinformatics methods, with the chance to present and discuss new ideas, interesting papers and work in progress.
We meet on an available Wednesday towards the end of every month at 1pm. Speakers will introduce what they do, give a quick career summary, and then present for ~25 mins. Questions and critique very encouraged!
Upcoming speakers
2026-05-27 - Dr Hollie Wilkinson (postdoc, Lagos group): Long read sequencing of blood samples to investigate response to immunotherapy in melanoma patients
2026-06-24 - TBC
2026-07-29 - Dr Cobus Smit (postdoc, Lichman group): Title TBC
2026-08-19 - TBC
Previous speakers
2026-04-29 - Dr Andrew Mason (PI): Biologically-informed and data-driven research to personalise bladder cancer treatment