Once a year, bioinformatics.org gives the “Benjamin Franklin” award to a person whose practice has “advanced open access in data and methods for life sciences.” There’s no cash prize, and the recipient doesn’t even get to give a talk. It usually gets presented in the…
People sometimes ask what motivates me to speak out publicly as an advocate and an ally to women and other underrepresented groups. Sometimes these questions are sincere. Mostly they are not. As I have found my voice on this topic, I have become aware of…
This post summarizes gender representation in the founding, leadership, board, and scientific advisory teams of 162 biotech companies – observed between October and December of 2019. Out of 162 companies listed on the “portfolio” pages of the big three Boston biotech venture firms (Third Rock…
On a whim the other day, I scraped the “portfolio” page on the websites of three of the large venture capital firms in Kendall Square (Atlas Venture, Flagship Pioneering, and Third Rock Ventures) to generate a list of 162 biotech companies. The first thing I…
This is the second in a series of three or four posts. The first one, diverse teams perform better, explored some of the research on the measurable performance advantages that diverse teams have over monocultures. This and future posts will share real world examples about…
In my next three or four posts, I’m hoping to lay out a story that goes something like this: Diverse teams outperform monocultures. Biases in hiring and retention mean missing out on that performance boost. Biased systems self perpetuate. It takes action to break the…
Earlier this year, I purchased Dante Labs “whole genome Z” service, which includes 30x sequencing of every base pair of my DNA, plus an additional 100x on the protein coding regions. I mostly did this for the raw data. I work in this space and…
What are the most important pieces of professional advice you’ve ever received? I remember one of mine clearly: It was in late 2004, and my colleague Bill told me that it was “time to have an idea.” I had hired in as the first employee…
Climate change is real, human activity is driving it, it’s an emergency. We need to slam the brakes on carbon emissions right now to have any hope of a smaller scale catastrophe. That’s the choice. Doing nothing or putting it off is a crime against…
We are living through an uncomfortable period in the practice of medicine. The dialogue between patient and physician is critically underserved, both in terms of tools for patients and physicians, and also in terms of the data context where that conversation takes place. This is…