Sarah Westcott
Bioinformatician - Senior Computational Biologist
Granville, Massachusetts, United States
Summary
👤
Senior🎓
Top SchoolSarah Westcott is a senior computational biologist and bioinformatician with 14 years of experience building high-quality, data-driven algorithms and software for microbial genomics and model-based engineering workflows. Currently at the University of Michigan after a senior engineering stint at MathWorks, she blends academic open-source leadership—most notably long-term contributions to the widely used mothur project and development of the OptiClust clustering algorithm—with enterprise-grade feature design and API integrations. Known for optimizing performance and processes, she pairs rigorous statistical method implementation with clear communication to both technical and non-technical stakeholders. Based in Granville, Massachusetts, she brings a rare mix of research pedigree and product-focused engineering, having established best practices like git-based workflows, user forums, and comprehensive user documentation.
14 years of coding experience
16 years of employment as a software developer
Bachelor of Science (B.S.), Computer Science, Bachelor of Science (B.S.), Computer Science at Western New England University
Github Skills (30)
open-science10
ecology10
biology10
fill10
microbiology10
chimera10
mothur10
immunology10
microbiome10
expandable10
fastq10
biodiversity10
bioinformatics10
computational-biology10
phylogeny10
Programming languages (3)
Github contributions (5)
mothur/mothur
Jan 2012 - Dec 2022
Welcome to the mothur project, initiated by Dr. Patrick Schloss and his software development team in the Department of Microbiology & Immunology at The University of Michigan. This project seeks to develop a single piece of open-source, expandable software to fill the bioinformatics needs of the microbial ecology community.
Contributions:55 releases, 2336 commits, 239 PRs in 11 years
fillbiodiversitymichiganbioinformaticsmicrobial-ecology
mothur/vsearch
Nov 2015 - Mar 2016
Contributions:9 pushes in 4 months
bioinformaticsmetagenomicsversatile
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