Michael Gatzen
Computational Scientist
Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolMichael Gatzen is a computational scientist with six years of experience building robust bioinformatics software at the Broad Institute, where he progressed from visiting scholar to senior roles and now leads computational efforts. He blends a strong academic foundation in computer and electrical engineering from RWTH Aachen (with exchange studies at UBC) with hands-on engineering, contributing to high-profile open-source projects like GATK—improving GVCF validation, reference-block concordance analysis, and fixing production issues. Comfortable across research and production, he bridges algorithmic development, QA, and scalable back-end engineering for genomic data workflows. Colleagues rely on him for methodical problem solving and careful test-driven enhancements that strengthen data integrity in large-scale sequencing pipelines.
7 years of coding experience
7 years of employment as a software developer
Exchange Studies, Computer Engineering, Exchange Studies, Computer Engineering at The University of British ColumbiaMaster of Science - MS, Computer Engineering, Master of Science - MS, Computer Engineering at RWTH Aachen University
Github Skills (11)
bioinformatics10
javas10
genome10
java10
genomes10
testing10
ng9
command-line-interface8
command-line8
cli8
python5
Programming languages (7)
Github contributions (5)
broadinstitute/gatk
Jul 2019 - May 2022
Official code repository for GATK versions 4 and up
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer & QA Engineer
Back-end Developer & QA EngineerContributions:12 reviews, 31 commits, 13 PRs in 2 years 10 months
Contributions summary:Michael focused on enhancing the GATK codebase, specifically in the area of GVCF file validation and reference block concordance analysis. They added support for validating GVCF files with multiple contigs by implementing new methods and integration tests to ensure data integrity. Furthermore, they contributed to the development of the `ReferenceBlockConcordance` tool, designed to evaluate the concordance of reference blocks within GVCF files, enhancing the tool's validation capabilities with new tests. Finally, they fixed an issue within `SelectVariants` tool related to duplicate header lines.
gatkgenomicssparksciencedna
michaelgatzen/warp
Dec 2020 - Oct 2021
WDL Analysis Research Pipelines
Contributions:104 pushes, 18 branches in 10 months
pipelineswdlanalysispipeline
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