Robert Buels
Staff Software Engineer at GeneDx
Seattle, Washington, United States
Summary
👤
Senior🎓
Top SchoolRobert Buels is a Staff Software Engineer with 17 years of experience leading and building bioinformatics and clinical software, currently based in Seattle and working at GeneDx. He combines deep full‑stack expertise—from PostgreSQL-backed backend engineering and DBIx::Class contributions to polished JavaScript genome browsers like JBrowse—with hands-on people leadership, having built and led teams at UC Berkeley and ROSALIND. Robert has a track record of designing shared architectures (JBrowse 2 across web, desktop, and embedded) and improving reliability in core open-source bioinformatics libraries such as BioPerl and DBIx::Class. Comfortable bridging research and product, he ships data‑centric clinical tools and genomic UIs while mentoring engineers and integrating community contributions. Unusually, his background spans both low-level database/schema work and front-end genomic visualization, enabling him to solve problems across the full data pipeline.
16 years of coding experience
20 years of employment as a software developer
M. Eng. Electrical and Computer Engineering, M. Eng. Electrical and Computer Engineering at Cornell University
Spanish, German
Stackoverflow
184reputation
3kreached
2answers
1question
Github Skills (25)
javascript10
postgresql10
css10
bioperl10
dbi10
user-interface10
dbix-class10
ui-design10
perl10
interface-design10
refactor10
front-end-development10
html10
bioinformatics10
perl-module10
Programming languages (11)
Github contributions (5)
GMOD/jbrowse
Apr 2011 - Mar 2021
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:54 releases, 1 review, 5245 commits in 10 years
Contributions summary:Robert primarily focused on front-end development, contributing to several UI and component enhancements within the JBrowse genome browser. They fixed bugs related to GFF3 parsing, refined the visualization of sequence tracks with new features like translation display, and updated the display of feature details. Furthermore, the user contributed to the configuration and UI elements related to the track selector and enhanced the capabilities of feature search functionality. The changes involved JavaScript and likely HTML/CSS.
genomegenome-browserbrowsergenome-annotationprotein-annotation
bioperl/bioperl-live
May 2010 - Sep 2012
Core BioPerl 1.x code
Role in this project:Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:71 commits in 2 years 4 months
Contributions summary:Robert primarily contributed to the BioPerl core code, focusing on bug fixes and code cleanup within the `Bio::DB::Taxonomy::entrez.pm` and `Bio::Tools::CodonTable.pm` modules. They addressed issues related to error handling, whitespace, and improved the logic for codon table functionality. Furthermore, the user worked on refactoring and enhancing ORF finding capabilities within `Bio::PrimarySeqI.pm`, aiming to improve the tools within the BioPerl toolkit.
bioperlpdb-filesbiologytoolkitbioinformatics
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