Helen Schuilenburg
Senior Software Developer at Wellcome Sanger Institute
Greater Cambridge Area United Kingdom
Summary
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SeniorHelen Schuilenburg is a Senior Software Developer with nine years' experience building and maintaining data-rich systems in genomics and epidemiology research environments. Based in the Greater Cambridge area, she combines strong database design, administration and migration skills with hands-on data curation, cleaning and integration to make complex datasets usable for researchers. At EMBL-EBI and the Wellcome Sanger Institute she moved from scientific programming into senior development and data engineering roles, routinely supporting upgrades and large-scale data workflows. She contributes to high-profile open-source genomics tooling—most notably enhancements to Ensembl's Variant Effect Predictor—demonstrating practical expertise in bioinformatics input parsing and VCF handling. A meticulous problem-solver with keen attention to data quality, she is actively expanding her capabilities in big data management and analysis. Her blend of research-facing experience and software craftsmanship makes her especially effective at turning messy biological data into reliable, production-ready resources.
9 years of coding experience
7 years of employment as a software developer
Github Skills (3)
bioinformatics10
perl10
vcf-files9
Programming languages (6)
Github contributions (5)
Ensembl/ensembl-vep
Dec 2017 - Nov 2021
The Ensembl Variant Effect Predictor predicts the functional effects of genomic variants
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:1 release, 13 reviews, 53 commits in 3 years 11 months
Contributions summary:Helen primarily contributed to the `Bio::EnsEMBL::VEP` module, focusing on enhancements related to parsing and processing different input formats, specifically SPDI and CAID. They implemented a parser for CAIDs, a ClinGen identifier, and modified the existing VCF output to keep zero values. The user also updated the VEP version and copyright notices, indicating involvement in maintaining the codebase and keeping it up-to-date.
ensemblgenomicsbioinformaticspredictorgenomic
helensch/VEP_plugins
Feb 2017 - Dec 2021
Plugins for the Ensembl Variant Effect Predictor (VEP)
Contributions:10 pushes, 25 branches in 4 years 10 months
ensemblpredictorvep
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