created by Geraldine_VdAuwera
on 2017-01-23
I want to give mad props to my team. Every day they handle new questions about obscure error messages or unusual experimental designs, on top of their ongoing efforts to develop new documentation materials and keep up with the latest innovations that the dev team is working on. All of this in service of a community with a very wide range of use cases -- and levels of comfort with the biology and/or computational aspects of genomics. It's a challenging job, especially when the tools and technology keep evolving under your feet, and the science itself refuses to stop mutating. Poetic, I suppose, if inconvenient.
And that's why we are a team with a wide range of strengths, backgrounds and interests as you can see in the 2017 team roster below.
So, please say hello in the comments if you appreciate this team's efforts, or really make our day and send us a postcard! One online commenter and one postcard sender will each be chosen at random* and receive a GATK-themed prize**.
Our mailing address is:
GATK Outreach, c/o G. Van der Auwera
Broad Institute, Room 415M-7100-B
415 Main Street,
Cambridge MA 02142
USA
* We reserve the right to implement random selection at our discretion. I expect it will be a low-tech implementation involving printing out bits of paper, folding them and having a random grad student in the cafeteria pick one out of a hat.
** Nature of prizes also to be determined as I need to find out how much of my outreach budget I can use for this. I can pretty much guarantee that the prizes will have no real monetary value, but will come with serious bragging rights.
| | | | :- | :- | | Kate V | | | | Kate Voss is the newest "Kate" to join the support team and if you think it's confusing for you, well it's confusing for us too. She comes from the tech world of startups and APIs, and her focus is on Cromwell and WDL. Kate is a native of the Boston area but regularly hops around the world for a few days or weeks at a time. Next destination: Cuba. | | Kate N | | |
| Kate Noblett studied biochemistry in the bitter, frozen tundra of Minnesota, with intention of going into cancer biology. However, she discovered her love for computer programming could be applied to her interest in biology. She joined the GATK support team in 2015, and continues to hone her skills in the technology half of biotechnology. | | Soo Hee | | |
| Soo Hee Lee (@shlee on the forum, not to be confused with @slee, i.e. Sam Lee the GATK developer) became interested in genomics after doing her 23andMe. She started writing about bioinformatics tools and data portals in 2014, in the Cancer Program at the Broad Institute and joined the GATK team in 2015. Previously, Soo Hee worked at the bench as a biochemist and earned her Ph.D. from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. | | Sheila | | |
| Sheila Chandran has been with the team for almost 3 years as an associate computational biologist. She hopes you all know her from answering your forum questions about GATK tools; she looks forward to continue answering your GATK3 questions -- and move on to GATK4 questions in the coming months! | | Geraldine | | |
| Geraldine Van der Auwera is a lapsed microbiologist who believes that doing interesting science shouldn't require advanced computational expertise. She enjoys traveling the world for GATK workshops and delights in telling confused relatives that she tweets for a living. They probably think she's a travel blogger (but that's Kate V). She looks forward to the next step in her quixotic quest to get everyone in the world running GATK successfully, efficiently and at scale -- now with WDL and Cromwell in the cloud. |
Updated on 2017-06-23
From pachewychomp on 2017-01-23
Hello and thanks so much for all of your efforts! We couldn’t possibly provide high quality analyses without the GATK backbone, that’s for sure!
From ClementKent2 on 2017-01-23
Great tools and great support – good support is hard to do, so we really appreciate it!
From samarth51 on 2017-01-24
Hii,
I really appreciate the efforts of the team. This tool makes our life easier every day. It’s a great tool with well-researched documentation.
From mingqiangren on 2017-01-24
Hi,
Thank all of you so much for your great works! GATK is an important tool in our researches.
From LeeTL1220 on 2017-01-24
You guys have done a great job for the developers, as well! You make our lives easier, without a doubt.
From lindenb on 2017-01-25
Thank you for the tools; thank you for the support; thank you for the patience ! :-)
From andrewo on 2017-01-25
Thank you for being responsive and helpful!
From drmurdock80 on 2017-01-28
Thank you for all you do! GATK is a wonderful tool.
From GilHornung on 2017-01-29
To tell you the truth, I don’t know how I would have used GATK without the Q&A and forums…
From EADG on 2017-01-30
Thank for all the answer @ stupid questions :)
From MattB on 2017-01-31
Thanks so much for all your help over the last few years it’s much appreciated! The support you provide really is a level above the rest and sets the standard.
From krzakoor on 2017-01-31
Thanks for all of your endless efforts to streamline, document and answer everyone’s questions while showing your personalities! I can’t say how many times I’ve looked through the Q&A forms and have found my answers!
From Geraldine_VdAuwera on 2017-02-09
Thanks everyone for your kind words! We’ll direct the good feels about the tools themselves on the tool developers of course :)
We’re going to leave this open for a couple more weeks before we do the drawing.
From whebel on 2017-02-10
great job guys, thanks!
From aeahmed on 2017-04-12
This support is really the deal breaker for the GATK. Thank you!
From wisonlee on 2017-04-12
`Hi, thanks a million!`
From Geraldine_VdAuwera on 2017-06-23
OK I know this comes super late (what can I say, we were a little busy writing docs for GATK4) but we have a winner! Actually, two winners: google’s random number generator picked aeahmed to win in the random drawing, and
MattB wins for having sent us a postcard!
What do they win? Well, it turns out we can’t use our team budget to give random people on the internet material gifts (rules, schmules) but we can offer extra help with GATK work. So aeahmed and
MattB, let me know what are your most burning GATK or WDL problems (maybe the upcoming GATK4 migration?), and if needed we’ll set up some one-on-one time to help you.
And everyone who commented here gets a set of exclusive GATK laptop stickers as a consolation prize! Just private-message me your mailing address if you want some.
Thanks again for your kind words!
From yzharold on 2017-06-27
Great job through the years, really appreciated your dedication and fast response to questions!