Fabio D'Orazio: October 2016

Data analysis is crucial when dealing with Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) technology, not trivial at all but extremely powerful if well executed.

As a mainly wet-lab scientist, I decided to exploit the opportunities the network provides, take a RNA-Seq dataset with me and make my way to Münster.

There, Juanma Vaquerizas kindly offered to help myself and my project providing support and training at the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Biomedicine. With years of experience in NGS data analysis and a solid group of bioinformaticians, I couldn’t imagine any better place where to go.

As i expected, I found devoted and talented scientists, keen to help and in particular an extremely friendly environment.

Besides few technical issues (which were promptly overcome), the RNA-Seq analysis was smoothly completed within two weeks, ending up with a dataset of differential expressed genes.

Although dedicated to my project, I managed some sightseeing of the picturesque and crowded Münster, always kindly guided by my colleague and patient supervisor Benjamin Rodriguez.

After 20 fruitful days, I headed back towards Birmingham, aware of having gained skills for independently facing data analysis workflows and a consolidated friendship.