My name is Cristina Tuñí i Domínguez and I am a Bioinformatics Scientist from Barcelona.

Bioinformatics

I am working at Flomics Biotech, a biotech start-up whose objective is developing a non-invasive, liquid biopsy diagnostic test for the early diagnosis of several cancer types.

Centering on colorectal cancer analysis bioinformatics done at Flomics, I am also getting my PhD in Biomedicine at Universitat Pompeu Fabra.

My other duties include developing bioinformatics analysis pipelines ready and easy to use for our users. Those pipelines are developed using Nextflow as the workflow orchestrator, and the internal scripts include Bash, R, Python, and Perl. A key point for all the pipelines developed is them having an interactive final report, with all the useful information presented in the best way to the user. These reports include interactive plots and tables, using R packages such as DT and plotly.

All of the work mentioned above is carried out using Amazon Web Services, thus my duties also include setting up and modifying the cloud infrastructure to cater to the analysis and pipeline’s needs.

Since the work I carry out would be impossible with the tools designed by other bioinformatic scientists and computational biologists, I try to always give back to the community by collaborating in projects such as nf-core, by fixing bugs, writing documentation, creating new modules and features, and generally helping to the extent I can.

Finally, I decided to learn COBOL using free and paid online resources because it literally runs the world as we know it, as it sounds really interesting to know about it.

Teaching, SciComm & Outreach

I greatly enjoy communicating science in a useful manner, that is why I take every opportunity to teach, mentor, and advise other scientists more junior than me, or other individuals who might benefit from my knowledge. I used to work as a programming & robotics instructor for children aged 8 to 17, which gave me the skills needed to communicate technical concepts in an understandable way, and also the passion to continue doing it while working as a bioinformatics scientist.

I also have a deep interest in outreach initiatives aimed to bringing science closer to the general population, specially the younger generations.

Because of this I have participated in several of those initiatives as a scientist, and I take the opportunity to do it again whenever it arises.

Miscellaneous

Other than a passionate bioinformatician with a keen interest in divulgation and teaching, I also like and enjoy:

• Hiking: The north of Catalonia has breathtaking mountain ranges where I go get lost for a couple of days whenever I can.
• Sustainability: Specially interested in the change we, individuals, can make if we change our consumer habits.
• Music: I work better when listening to ambient black metal.
• RPGs: Both in videogame format or table-top.
• My cats: We have two rescue cats called Cornèlia and Tilda who also enjoy everything mentioned above.