René Rahn
Senior Computational Biologist Genetics
Berlin, Germany
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolRené Rahn is a Senior Computational Biologist with 13 years of experience building high-performance bioinformatics software at the nexus of modern C++ and large-scale genomics. He has been a core contributor to SeqAn, improving core algorithms, iterators and documentation, and led migrations to C++20 while introducing CI/CD and agile workflows to accelerate development. René designs scalable solutions for petabyte-scale sequence archives, parallelized pipelines and SIMD-accelerated routines for pangenome and mapping applications, and has driven Python bindings and reproducibility services for distributed genomic analysis. He pairs deep research credentials—including a PhD in bioinformatics—with hands-on engineering across CI systems, Jenkins/GitHub Actions, and full-stack prototypes in JavaScript/Python. An experienced instructor and workshop leader for de.NBI and international conferences, he brings a practical teaching mindset to tooling and community-focused development. Outside the codebase, his background as a lifeguard and volunteer firefighter informs a collaborative, service-oriented approach to interdisciplinary challenges.
14 years of coding experience
13 years of employment as a software developer
Doctor of Philosophy - PhD, Biomathematics, Bioinformatics, and Computational Biology, magna cum laude (disputation: summa cum laude), Doctor of Philosophy - PhD, Biomathematics, Bioinformatics, and Computational Biology, magna cum laude (disputation: summa cum laude) at Freie Universität Berlin
German, English
Github Skills (6)
c-language10
cprogramming-language10
documentation10
bioinformatics9
sequence-analysis9
api-design8
Programming languages (9)
Github contributions (5)
seqan/seqan
Dec 2013 - Apr 2021
SeqAn's official repository.
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer & Documentation Specialist
Back-end Developer & Documentation SpecialistContributions:2 releases, 14 reviews, 745 commits in 7 years 5 months
Contributions summary:René contributed documentation and refactored code related to core and seed classes, demonstrating a focus on code clarity and maintainability. They added code comments and modified documentation files to align with the code changes. The user also implemented a new iterator for journaled strings to improve runtime, indicating involvement in performance optimization and core library maintenance.
seqancpp14bioinfomaticshigh-performancesimd
rrahn/seqan3
Mar 2017 - Jul 2024
The modern C++ library for sequence analysis. Contains version 3 of the library and API docs.
Contributions:1 review, 27 PRs, 1601 pushes in 7 years 5 months
apisequencec-libraryfastafastq
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