Mesude Bicak

Dr. Mesude Bicak received her PhD in Systems Biology from the Department of Computer Science at University of Sheffield, U.K. in 2011, during which she also completed a short postdoctoral research project in Behavioral Ecology at the University of York in U.K., Biology Department. Her PhD and postdoctoral research provided her with a strong background in modelling complex behaviour of biological systems and expertise in agent-based modeling and high performance computing.

She joined the Molecular Evolution and Bioinformatics Group of CEH Research Institute as a
bioinformatician in February 2011. Within CEH, she works at the NERC Environmental Bioinformatics Centre (NEBC, http://nebc.nerc.ac.uk), where she is responsible for participating in strategic development of the Bio-Linux (http://nebc.nerc.ac.uk/tools/bio-linux) and CloudBioLinux (http://cloudbiolinux.org) computing platforms, both now used world-wide for research and training in bioinformatics. She is the Facility Manager of the bioinformatics arm of the NERC Biomolecular Analysis Facility (NBAF-W, http://nbaf.nerc.ac.uk), where she coordinates projects, organizes and teaches training courses for NERC-funded researchers, and performs data analysis using next-generation sequencing technologies and modelling approaches in microbial genomics.

Dr. Bicak is an active member of the Genomic Standards Consortium (http://gensc.org) and the Genomic Observatories Network (http://genomicobservatories.org). Most recently, she is also involved in the launch of the NERC Environmental Omics Synthesis (EOS) Centre (http://environmentalomics.org) as the Scientific Co-ordinator, where she is responsible for bringing domain scientists together in annual workshops. Her research interests are in molecular evolution, metagenomics, bioinformatics, behavioural modelling, standards development and data sharing.