Alex Herbert
Bioinformatician
Brighton, England, United Kingdom
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolAlex Herbert is a bioinformatician with 14 years’ experience translating biological questions into robust software, currently developing image analysis tools for the Genome Damage and Stability Centre at the University of Sussex. He holds a PhD in Bioinformatics from Imperial College London and combines academic rigor with practical engineering from prior roles at Tessella and PwC Consulting. A seasoned back-end developer and test automation engineer, Alex contributes to prominent Apache Commons libraries—improving algorithms, fixing subtle bugs (e.g., Simpson integrator and MurmurHash3 edge cases), and strengthening test coverage and documentation. He is comfortable moving between research code and production-quality Java libraries, with a knack for refactoring, performance tuning, and careful API design. Colleagues rely on him for dependable, well-tested solutions that bridge computational biology and long-lived open-source infrastructure.
15 years of coding experience
3 years of employment as a software developer
PhD, Bioinformatics, PhD, Bioinformatics at Imperial College LondonMRes, Bioinformatics, MRes, Bioinformatics at University of YorkBSc, Biochemistry, BSc, Biochemistry at University of Leeds
Github Skills (30)
unit-testing10
algorithms10
csv-parse10
commons10
testing10
text-manipulation10
analyse10
bloom-filter10
data-structure10
java10
javas10
junit10
apache-commons-lang10
string-utils10
csv-parsing10
Programming languages (9)
Github contributions (5)
apache/commons-math
May 2018 - Dec 2022
Apache Commons Math
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer & Test Automation Engineer
Back-end Developer & Test Automation EngineerContributions:39 reviews, 154 commits, 21 PRs in 4 years 8 months
Contributions summary:Alex primarily contributed to the `org.apache.commons.math4` library by adding JUnit tests. Their work focused on addressing and documenting bugs related to the Simpson Integrator, specifically issues with minimal iteration counts and incorrect Simpson sum computations. The user's commits included test cases to verify the accuracy of Simpson's rule, convergence behaviors, and expected sum results. Additionally, the user made minor code improvements, such as removing trailing whitespace and fixing Javadoc references.
apache-commonsjavamathstatpolynomial
apache/commons-collections
Feb 2020 - Nov 2022
Apache Commons Collections
Role in this project:Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:132 reviews, 99 commits, 20 PRs in 2 years 9 months
Contributions summary:Alex primarily contributed to the Apache Commons Collections library by refactoring and improving the code related to Bloom filters. Their work involved removing unimplemented methods from the Javadoc, eliminating extra lines, and adding functionality for cardinality calculations within the BitSetBloomFilter. Additionally, the user corrected the javadoc and made improvements in the counting and merging functionality. This involved code cleanup.
apache-commonscommons
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