What I do all day

Lately some people have been asking me what it is exactly that I do at work.

The fancy answer is that I am the project manager of a quality control analysis team that uses market-leading computer software to analyze data from biological proteomics experiments. Doesn’t that sound elaborate?

But in simpler terms, what I do all day is stare at spots on a computer screen.

Biomedical research centers, universities and companies send us picture files of their 2-D protein gels that look like this:

The company I work for, Ludesi, is a biotech company that has developed software that can analyze this picture file in a very in-depth way that gives a lot of relevant biological information. Most customers send in anywhere from 6 to 50 gels at a time, often as comparative experiments, so our work can help them determine for example the differences between diseased vs control patients.

The company I work for is at the forefront of this business, and on average Ludesi analysis reduces the false positive ratio by 40% and quadruples the number of true positives. This is because of our quality control analyst team that refines and confirms the spot detection, matching, quantifying and normalizing done by the software. They have also developed a way to look at these 2D gels in 3D.

As project manager I keep things running smoothly, meet deadlines and delegate analysis tasks to the different members of the analyst team, while also doing the analysis myself. We get bonuses every time we meet a deadline early, and since I have been project manager we get bonuses over 50% of the time. :o)