Author: gd2212

Ducks and Snakes

ouch – I was really hoping this would work (and I assume that import PhD won’t work either…), but it seems I really have to write this post … I guess I’m definitely getting too accustomed to Python!

I’ve been programming a lot recently (as expected, given my project…), as my comrade Emperor Duck attests. I’m mostly using Python, a really neat, readable and powerful programming language designed by cool cats for cool cats. If the myriad of programmers expressing their happiness online and the barrage of compliments present on the first descriptive paragraph of its Wikipedia article are not sufficient to express how cool it is, I think this xkcd comic should suffice.

Off Magnets and MassSpec

Hello everybody!

My PhD project revolves around the usage of metabolic phenotyping in epidemiological studies and the MWAS (Metabolome Wide Association Study). Basically, the metabolic phenotyping of urine biofluid samples from participants in epidemiologic studies makes it possible to look for associations between metabolites, nutrition and the health status of individuals and populations. We then have huge ammounts of very rich and complex data to explore and a lot of detective work to do. Handling all this is an Herculean task that cannot be accomplished without automation and computational tools. I’m developing some of these tools and applying them on data from epidemiolgical studies on blood pressure and cardiovascular disease.