Rory Kirchner
Senior Computational Biologist III
Westford, Massachusetts, United States
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolRory Kirchner is a Senior Computational Biologist with 15 years of experience building validated, highly scalable NGS pipelines used by thousands of researchers worldwide. He blends deep bioinformatics expertise across ChIP/ATAC, bulk and single-cell RNA/DNA, and variant calling with production-grade software engineering, contributing core back-end work to widely used open-source projects like bcbio-nextgen and MultiQC. At institutions from MIT to Harvard and now Ginkgo Bioworks, Rory has focused on infrastructure that accelerates large-scale genomics processing and reproducible analysis. He also brings systems-level automation experience from work on CloudBioLinux and Bioconda, ensuring tools are deployable in cloud and cluster environments. Known for improving both algorithmic quality and operational reliability, he is available for remote work and combines a neuroscientist’s curiosity with practical pipeline engineering.
15 years of coding experience
19 years of employment as a software developer
Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Health Sciences and Technnology, Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Health Sciences and Technnology at Massachusetts Institute of TechnologyB.S., Biotechnology, B.S., Biotechnology at Rochester Institute of Technology
English
Stackoverflow
333reputation
63kreached
0answers
1question
Github Skills (28)
data-visualizations10
zeromq10
package-management10
python10
clojure-cli10
conda10
data-visualisation10
clojure10
mu10
rna-seq10
bioinformatics10
error-handling10
data-visualization10
bam9
r9
Programming languages (25)
Github contributions (5)
clojupyter/clojupyter
May 2014 - Feb 2018
a Jupyter kernel for Clojure
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:62 commits, 17 PRs, 57 pushes in 3 years 9 months
Contributions summary:Rory primarily contributed to the Clojure Jupyter kernel, enhancing its functionality and stability. They addressed issues with message signing and protocol compliance, improving the kernel's compatibility with Jupyter. The user refactored code to improve the error-handling for exception tracebacks, and included features for handling of code completion, and for complete code block detection. They also implemented handling for stdout and stderr, contributing to a more interactive user experience.
clojurejupyter-kernels
chapmanb/cloudbiolinux
Aug 2013 - Feb 2021
CloudBioLinux: configure virtual (or real) machines with tools for biological analyses
Role in this project:Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:274 commits, 27 PRs, 174 pushes in 7 years 7 months
Contributions summary:Rory primarily contributes to the installation and configuration of bioinformatics tools within the CloudBioLinux framework. Their work focuses on integrating various tools for biological analyses, including spliced read aligners like STAR, RNA-seq quality control tools like RNA-SeQC, and copy number variation callers like Control-FREEC. Furthermore, the user demonstrates an understanding of system configuration, including installation and dependencies management, as evidenced by upgrades and addition of tools like Picard and Delly.
analysesmachinesbioinformaticsconfigurebiological
Find and Hire Top DevelopersWe’ve analyzed the programming source code of over 60 million software developers on GitHub and scored them by 50,000 skills. Sign-up on Prog,AI to search for software developers.