Compass Bioinformatics is managed and ran by Dr. Daniel Pass. Formerly a full time lecturer and researcher of Bioinformatics at Cardiff University, I took the post-pandemic decision to step away from grant-chasing, formal schedules (and the REF!) to focus on the parts of science I love the most, while also giving myself space to grow the community projects I built during the pandemic.

Since 2012 I have taught masters bioinformatics courses as a lecturer at Cardiff University, and external courses directly to researchers with the Wellcome Trust, NERC, and Physalia courses.

I started out in bioinformatics building transcriptome databases from Sanger Sequencing (remember that?) in 2009, I later did my PhD on environmental microbiomics, followed by postdoctoral research on chromatin structure and Transcription Factor dynamics.

My academic research revolved around integrating *omic technologies to further understand genetic control, post-translational modification, and epigenetics, looking at the role of the microbiome on host transcription as a model. This integrated a wide range of RNAseq, DNA accessibility, CHIPseq, and microbiomics.

Along the way this has lead to a lot of experience working with High Performance Compute clusters and the cloud, and the linux environment in general. I mostly programme in python and R, and pipeline with Nextflow. Whilst being now exclusively concerned with bioinformatic analysis, I also have extensive experience in the wet-lab from my PhD days, a skill which greatly aids communication with scientists without bioinformatic experience.

Outside of work I enjoy sci-fi epics, DIY, and run a community cafe/coworking & events space (Tŷ Ni) , and a community food co-operative (Splo-down).