Nathan Watson-haigh
Associate Director Of Genome Informatics
Adelaide, South Australia
Summary
👤
Senior🎓
Top SchoolNathan Watson-haigh is an Associate Director of Genome Informatics with nearly two decades of bioinformatics experience spanning cereal genomics, transcriptomics, systems biology, and high-performance/cloud computing. He blends deep biological training (PhD investigating the root of the eukaryotic tree) with hands-on infrastructure expertise—designing and managing large-memory Slurm clusters, clustered storage, and cloud-based training platforms. Nathan has led genome informatics projects across academia and industry, built NGS pipelines for polyploid wheat, and helped found regional bioinformatics communities and training initiatives like BIG SA and a cloud Bioinformatics Training Platform. An active open-source contributor, he has improved core genome-browser functionality in GMOD/jbrowse and fixed scientific software packaging issues in EasyBuild, demonstrating both front-end and back-end fluency. He combines a pragmatic sysadmin mindset with a passion for reproducible, test-driven code and researcher-focused tools that speed discovery and improve resource efficiency. Based in Adelaide, he also supports the field as an editor and educator, bridging advanced research and practical training.
13 years of coding experience
6 years of employment as a software developer
Master of Pharmacology, Pharmacology, Master of Pharmacology, Pharmacology at University of BathPhD, Bioinformatics, PhD, Bioinformatics at University of York
English
Stackoverflow
5,063reputation
159kreached
5answers
4questions
git
top-5%
github
top-1%
Github Skills (24)
webbrowser10
javascript10
scite10
github10
python10
hpc10
browser10
regular-expression10
scilab10
html10
bioinformatics10
debug9
git9
linux8
command-line6
Programming languages (18)
Github contributions (5)
GMOD/jbrowse
Jan 2018 - Jul 2018
JBrowse 1, a full-featured genome browser built with JavaScript and HTML5. For JBrowse 2, see https://github.com/GMOD/jbrowse-components.
Role in this project:
Full-stack Developer
Full-stack DeveloperContributions:11 commits, 5 PRs, 43 comments in 6 months
Contributions summary:Nathan primarily contributed to the front-end and core functionality of the JBrowse genome browser. They added user customization options, allowing modification of SNP indicator rendering. Furthermore, they significantly improved the parsing of location strings and the display of subfeatures. These improvements included adding support for obscure sequence names and correcting display behaviors.
genomegenome-browserbrowsergenome-annotationprotein-annotation
easybuilders/easybuild-easyblocks
Jan 2016 - Mar 2016
Collection of easyblocks that implement support for building and installing software with EasyBuild.
Role in this project:Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:7 commits, 1 PR, 6 comments in 2 months
Contributions summary:Nathan primarily focused on modifying and improving the `easyblock` definition for the Picard library. Their contributions involved updating the sanity check step to account for version-specific file structures, effectively resolving compatibility issues across different Picard versions. These changes ensure accurate installation and operation of Picard within the EasyBuild framework, focusing on the scientific software domain. The user also streamlined the code by replacing verbose logic with more efficient Python methods and addressing code style.
pythoninstallinglinuxscientific-softwarehpc
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