My name is Simeon Hebrew, currently in my first year of my Masters program in Life Sciences and Health (Genetics, Genomics, Epigenetics and Evolution track) at Université Paris-Saclay in France.

During my final year of undergraduate studies, I was excited to learn about the existence of an intersection between computational methods and biological data; so much in fact that I ended up taking an in silico approach to my final year project.

In effort to fulfill this emerging curiosity, I pursued a self-teaching schedule majorly on the foundational concepts of programming in languages which are renowned in the bioinformatics community such as perl and python. This coincided with my timely acceptance into the EANBiT Bioinformatics incubation program based at the International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology (ICIPE) which presented the perfect opportunity for me to solidify the self-taught introductory elements as well as learn and apply new knowledge on bioinformatics under the guidance of experienced instructors. To achieve this, I developed a roadmap which enabled me to prioritize my areas of learning in tandem with the proposed internship timeline . These were divided into learning collaborative and version control tools, understanding programming frameworks such as Bash and python, analyzing genomic data using dedicated tools and finally applying the mentioned aspects in an assigned mini-project. This was supplemented by key modules such as navigating high performance computing environments, workflow management platforms such as Galaxy and Nextflow, journal club presentations that allowed us to practise scientific delivery of published research and the concept of open science. As steep as the learning curve was in the time allocated, the journey was priceless. The challenges encountered offered an ideal opportunity to harness problem-solving skills both individually and collectively with my colleagues.

The perfect measure of skill-retention was the mini-project that we (Rose and I) were tasked with that aimed to examine the role of sylvatic transmission of African Animal Trypanosomiasis in livestock by quantifying wildlife-to-livestock transmission in Shimba Hills National Park by genotyping individual parasites using Whole Genome Sequencing (WGS) data analysis. Collaborative working was one of the primary skills that I enhanced during this period. It was essential to completely understand the scope of the project, split tasks, set short-term goals and work towards the realization of these goals. This was complemented by a reinforcement in skills such as how to benchmark bioinformatics tools for analysis , developing reproducible workflows using Nextflow, data visualization using R and scientific reporting. During this time, I had the chance to offer assistance to bioinformatics novels that had enrolled into the Introduction to Bioinformatics course organized by H3ABionet and this served as a helpful platform to share the knowledge I had acquired.

This internship proved to greatly influence my academic and career progression as I inclined towards looking for postgraduate opportunities that were centered on genomics and bioinformatics.Fortunately enough, I was accepted into the earlier mentioned Masters program and so far, I have thoroughly applied the skills I obtained during my internship to actively participate in bioinformatics lectures and practical sessions. I have also used tools such as R to analyze data in wet-lab settings hence proving the universality of the language. This experience not only helped me get accepted to a Masters program, but also gave me confidence to take up bioinformatics-oriented projects such as my current Masters internship which is based on using ATAC-Seq to characterize the regulatory epigenetic landscape of Platynereis dumerilii during its posterior regeneration.

I am looking forward to seeing what lies ahead as I continue improving my computational skills and understanding how to continuously apply them in the context of biological data analysis.