“What is more fulfilling in life than to work on health?"

Since he graduated from the University of Ghent with a degree in computer science, Erik Vandeputte , currently team lead for Software & IT Architecture at BioLizard, has always kept his focus squarely on dealing with data. Before joining BioLizard, Erik worked in a variety of sectors - from social media and advertising to finance - in both start-up and scale-up environments. One thing that was common across this variety of sectors, according to Erik, was that they “were at the brink of being disrupted by the leverage that big data offered.”

So, how did Erik find his way towards data as it exists in the biological sciences? It was quite some serendipity. Between reading about the many scientific breakthroughs in biology such as CRISPR and personalised medicine, and hearing from his flatmate about the challenges of writing code to interpret biological data, Erik saw that his skills could be put to great use in the world of biology. And as he puts it himself, “What is more fulfilling in life than to work on health, something that affects every human on this planet at some point in their life?”

That’s what Erik has found at BioLizard, where he started out as one of our first employees. As a bioinformatic scientist, he met his goal of rapidly becoming familiar with the industry, by working with multiple clients at the same time. Erik’s background in computer science has helped him support his colleagues and clients from the very beginning. He says,

“I learned that the field of biotechnology is a very multidisciplinary, albeit complex one to navigate. Even when you bring experts in different fields together, it often becomes difficult to collaborate, because the experts cannot sufficiently understand each other's field. It is exactly that gap that Biolizard aims to fill, by bridging the gap between IT professionals, biologists and data scientists.”

Nowadays, Erik is leading the Software & IT Architecture team, which focuses on leveraging software to improve efficiency and scalability, as well as designing a robust environment to accommodate that software… But you’ll hear more about that next week!

Are you already interested in working with Erik and his team in order to leverage the best software and IT tools available and get the most out of your data? BioLizard is here to help. Reach out to us today.?