Hi, I'm Ale

Alejandra Hernandez Segura

Data Engineer at Genmab

I am a (Bioinformatics) Data Engineer working helping Genmab finding new antibody therapies for cancer and other diseases by promoting and enforcing better data practices. I am also an R-ladies Utrecht organizer, a PyLadies member, an intense reader, a running and yoga practicer and a lover of Mexican culture.

Organization
Team Work
Communication
Hard Working
Fast Learner

Skills

Experiences

1
Data Engineer
Genmab

June 2022 - Present, Utrecht, The Netherlands

Genmab is specialized in the creation and development of differentiated antibody therapeutics for the treatment of cancer.

Responsibilities:
  • Creating data pipelines
  • Make dash/shiny dashboards
  • Improve how we deal with data.
National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM).

Apr 2020 - May 2022, Bilthoven, The Netherlands

The RIVM promotes public health and safeguards a healthy and safe environment.

Project manager

Sep 2020 - May 2022

  • Ensuring quality and delivery of the projects delivered by our group.
  • Organizing and chairing stand-up meetings and other group/team meetings.
  • Communicating results to the management team and to other staff and researchers.
  • Different management tasks such as participating in hiring committees, write budgets and proposals, etc.
Bioinformatician

Apr 2020 - Present

  • QC of genomics data.
  • Automating data analysis of bacterial sequencing data by building automated, reproducible and parallelized pipelines.
  • Data analysis and visualizations.
  • Writing SOPs and validation reports.
  • Supervising students/interns.
  • Keeping up with the novel techniques in the genomics/bioinformatics field.
  • Contributing to local and international genomics public health projects.
2
3
Grace Systems.

Nov 2018 - Feb 2020, Utrecht, The Netherlands

Grace Systems is a data analysis tool.

Team Lead Data Science

Sep 2019 - Feb 2020

  • Keeping track of the advancements in the bioinformatics and data science fields.
  • Deciding on the approach to take for different projects.
  • Communicating strategies and results to different stakeholders.
  • Writing detailed but understandable reports.
  • Major contributor in the hiring process of new colleagues.
Data Scientist

Nov 2018 - Feb 2020

  • Analyzing data, building models and visualizing epigenomics data in cancer to search of potential biomarkers.
  • Communicating results to supervisors and clients.
  • Constantly improving algorithms and pipelines.
Researcher - PhD candidate
European Research Institute for the Biology of Ageing.

Jan 2015 - Feb 2019, Groningen, The Netherlands

ERIBA’s goal is to better understand what causes ageing. It aims to develop novel strategies to prevent or combat age-related disease and to provide evidence-based recommendations for healthy ageing.

Responsibilities:
  • Proposing research questions.
  • Doing experiments and data analysis of transcriptomics data.
  • Data visualization for my and other people’s projects.
  • Presenting results in meetings and conferences.
  • Publishing results in peer-reviewed scientific journals.
  • Teaching and mentoring students.
4
5
Invited lecturer
Universidad de las Américas Puebla

Aug 2014 - Jan 2015, Puebla, Mexico

UDLAP’s mission is to form professionals who are critical, creative and innovative, wih a high technical capability and social conscience.

Responsibilities:
  • Teaching three practicalcourses (General Pharmacology, Biorganics and Microbiology and Parasitology).
  • Teaching one theoretical course (Pharmaceutical Biotechnology).

Projects

Juno pipeline
Juno pipeline
Developer and maintainer Apr 2020 - May 2020

Pre-processing and de novo assembly of short-read sequencing for bacterial genomes.

Star
Advanced-R bookclub
Advanced-R bookclub
Co-organizer Apr 2020 - Oct 2020

Together with other R-ladies chapters in the Netherlands, we organized a bookclub for the book Advanced R by Hadley Wickham.

Star
Coding Club
Founder and organizer March 2021 - May 2022

At work we started a coding club for bioinformaticians.

Details

Education

University of Groningen
2015-2019
Ph.D in Biology
Publications
University of Groningen
2012-2014
Master in Medical and Pharmaceutical Drug Innovation
Universidad de las Américas Puebla
2006-2011
Bachelor in Clinical Biochemistry
Diverse courses
Taken Courses
  • R
  • Data Science Professional Certificate - EdX
  • Genetics Epidemiology
  • Good Research Practices (GCP, GLP)
  • Neural Stem Cells
  • Single-cell Gene Expression - EMBL
  • Systematic Reviews and Meta-analysis
Extracurricular Activities
  • Organizer R-ladies Utrecht (2020-present).
  • Active member Science Outreach Committee ERIBA institute (2017-2019).
  • Start coach for Refugees in the city of Groningen (2016).
  • International Ambassador for the U. of Groningen (2014-2015).

Recent Posts

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Applied Bioinformatics and Public Health Microbiology Conference

This poster is the result of (part of) the work of the Juno team consisting in bioinformatics students/staff and microbiologists. We started last April (2020) automating many of the analyses done for diagnostic and surveillance at the RIVM. The poster itself should be self-explanatory and although the project is far from finished, we are happy to show our work. You can download the poster here.

April 19, 2021 Read
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United Nations votes - Data Viz exercise

.center { text-align: center align: center } I am really into data visualization and since in my current position as coördinator I get to do it way less than I would like to, I decided to take part of the #TidyTuesday challenge organized by the #rstats community every now and then. Main things I learned It was my first time making a map in a tidy format.

March 28, 2021 Read
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My experience as curator of @WeAreRLadies

.center { text-align: center align: center } To be honest, I took days preparing for my curator week so I had collected information, made a plan and trying to learn to use twitter 🙈 Still, it did not work very smoothly. Only on my second day I learned (or rather, the very nice ex-curator @PipingHotData taught me) how to upload gifs and how to make threads. Anyway, I survived and I got some nice comments, so hopefully people enjoyed it.

March 14, 2021 Read

Achievements

PhD Grant

Cum laude (Master)

Magna Cum Laude (Bachelor)

Full scholarship (Bachelor)

Patent

Sports prizes