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Bioinformatician of Greek origin Panagiotis (shortly Panos) Alexiou joined CEITEC Masaryk University (MU) five years ago as a new head of core facility bioinformatics and research group leader. Panos came to Brno together with his wife Jill Batdorf from the United States, where he worked as a research associate at the University of Pennsylvania. Panos brought expertise in bioinformatics analysis of high throughput sequencing data for various RNA binding proteins and besides his own research projects, he was helping other researchers with their bioinformatics data analysis and experiment design. Panos built two teams from scratch and organised bioinformatics seminars to transfer his bioinformatics know-how to the wider scientific community at CEITEC. His wife Jill worked at CEITEC as a policy officer within the Alliance4Life project and contributed to a more English-friendly working environment.
Panos and Jill were hired as dual-career couple and were connecting the employees in research and in the administration of CEITEC MU. Brno brought them growth and fulfilment not only in their professions but also in their private life – their daughter Katerina was born at the end of 2020 in Brno. In the year 2022, Panagiotis Alexiou was awarded a prestigious ERA Chair grant to establish a bioinformatics community at the University of Malta. ERA Chair grants increase research capacity by attracting high-level researchers to a widening university or research centre. The role of ERA Chairs is to establish a research team fully integrated into the coordinator's institution to significantly improve its research performance in a certain scientific domain. In Malta, Panos will focus on bioinformatics for genomics. His goal will be to sustainably develop the knowledge base in bioinformatics and machine learning skills required to translate patient-derived multi-Omic and clinical data into a better understanding of the disease.
Bioinformatics, as related to genetics and genomics, is a scientific subdiscipline that involves using computer technology to collect, store, analyse and disseminate biological data and information. Scientists and clinicians use those data to increase our understanding of health and disease and, in certain cases, as part of medical care. The role of bioinformatics in biological research can be compared with the role of data analysis in the age of information and the Internet. Advances in reading DNA sequences brought a new challenge - to understand and interpret the huge amount of information that has been collected. Because the human genome data sets are large, computer-based methods are the default approach. Panos and other bioinformaticians work with human genomes and seek to discover practical insights about human health and biology with all its complexity.
The career journey of Panagiotis Alexiou shows that science is all about give and take and about ongoing knowledge exchange. No great progress would be achieved without knowledge sharing and international mobility. This story is a wonderful example of a successful international career journey, where knowledge and experience are acquired and transferred to another place. Research institutes serve as lively technology and knowledge incubators providing good conditions for learning and professional development of researchers. International mobility helps to generate new ideas, creates interesting networks for collaboration, and enables the exchange of students and effective collaboration based on previously developed trust.
Interview the Panagiotis Alexiou
You joined CEITEC 5 years ago. What do you consider your greatest success during your time here at CEITEC?
I managed to build two essentially very well-functioning teams during a period that was difficult because of covid and because we had to work partially remotely. There was a period when I had to hire new people, and we had to work online from the beginning. The main achievement is that those teams are well functioning and can now work independently.
What would you say was the most challenging part of your stay?
Especially at the beginning, the recruitment of new people was difficult. Although CEITEC has a good name in the Czech Republic and increasingly also on the European level, it was still hard to recruit bioinformaticians that are highly competitive and in high demand. After the first few years, it became much easier because people in the field learned about our group and about CEITEC MU and I could definitely see an improvement.
What type of background do you usually look for when you hire new team members?
In the beginning, it was mostly biologists who were applying, and they didn’t have much background in IT, but later it was more IT people. For a functioning team, I need to have both backgrounds. I have myself background in biology therefore I prefer to work with IT people because their skills are complementary to my skills. I am better at teaching biology to IT people than teaching IT to biologists.
Could you compare the seven years you spent in Pennsylvania to the five years you spent here in Brno? Was it very different or was the experience similar?
It was very different. Mostly because my position here at CEITEC MU was more about managing people and I didn’t have any independent position. My work in Pennsylvania was more hands-on. Here I had to do more administrative and managerial tasks, and all this was new to me. This was at first a bit difficult with a steep learning curve. But it was a very important experience for me, and it opened up new opportunities. Leading two groups at the same time has taught me skills that I would never have acquired just by doing science. I would also like to add, that at CEITEC MU we had a lot of support in terms of soft skills development that was very useful for me. Those are skills that are usually not taught to a scientist, but they are really essential once you enter a position where you have to manage people.
Which specific courses did you take, that helped you in your role?
I took the EMBO leadership workshop for scientists developed by hfp, the SIY mindfulness course developed by Google, the unconscious bias workshop and a special course on hiring people organised by Masaryk University. I took as many soft skills courses as I could while I was at CEITEC MU.
How would you rate CEITEC as a place to do science? In terms of equipment, community, etc. How did you feel here as a scientist?
In terms of equipment and especially core facilities that are available, it is pretty much top quality because you have access to everything. Me personally, I didn’t have to use the core facilities but I could see the big advantage of having in-house facilities that can help scientists with all those different experiments that they can integrate together very well. As far as collaborations are concerned, I collaborated with many people at CEITEC, and I was very happy with that. I think that the size of CEITEC MU is perfect. It is a small enough institute that you can pretty much know everybody and you can easily find people to collaborate with. I actually collaborated mostly with researchers from CEITEC during those years. As a core facility, we had a lot of demand for our services and also external collaborations, but as a research group, whenever I wanted to conduct an experiment, I always find someone in-house, who was able to do it for me, which was great.
What inspired you to develop the bioinformatics seminars at CEITEC?
I wanted to develop bioinformatics skills also within the wider scientific community as those are very important transferable skills for many researchers. I established a regular bioinformatics seminar, where we were teaching researchers how to practically use various bioinformatics methods and their advantages. Unfortunately, this activity died off a bit during covid, but my colleagues will surely continue with the activity even after I leave. Maybe the seminars will be hybrid now, after covid it is hard to get people together to gather in one room. But I personally still prefer the in-person meeting in the form of a talk because they also give space for informal conversation and exchange of interesting ideas. In online meetings, people tend to listen in the background and do other things, and there are more distractions.
And now let’s speak about the new chapter in your life. What motivated you to apply for the ERA chair grant?
It is definitely a big step. The grant provides guaranteed funding for five years, and it allows me to build something sustainable from scratch. To set up a totally new bioinformatics programme with a research component and educational component. It will be very similar to what I did here, and it will be well-funded. The main difference is that CEITEC is a research institute and the University of Malta is a university. Therefore, I will be much busier with setting up educational aspects there. We have the plan to set up a new PhD school for bioinformatics within the next five years. I will also be working much closer with medical doctors and the hospital and there will be a shift a bit closer to applied research.
Did you apply for the ERA Chair grant with the University of Malta together?
No, actually the university had the grant ready and needed the right expert to match the grant. They were searching online, found me and head-hunted me. They called me up and said that they saw my background and whether I would be interested in being part of this grant application. My initial thought was, that the ERA chair is a much more senior position and I am just a junior group leader. But my profile really fitted very well with what they wanted and needed. I told them to put my name into the grant and let’s see what will happen, but I actually didn´t give it much hope.
How was it when you found out that you got the grant?
I was very happy. It is really a great career opportunity for me to set up something long-lasting all by myself and I don´t have to worry about funding for the next five years. Generally, in research, unless you have one of the big grants like ERC, you have to chase funding year after year, and it has to be a research project. ERA chair is not actually a research project, it is special funding for structural change. It is more about setting up, about building something that will be working for years to come. It is very creative and fulfilling.
You will probably utilize in that new position many of the skills you acquired here at CEITEC MU. Is it right?
Yes, definitely. I will be using my technical skills and all the managerial skills I acquired here. I will keep many ongoing collaborations with CEITEC MU, we will be working together on pipelines, and I hope that we will design some new research projects together in the future. I will stay in touch with my old team here in Brno, and I will still have some PhD students here until they graduate. I will supervise them remotely and come here every semester for a couple of weeks. I am also planning to invite my students from CEITEC to come to Malta for a few weeks to do their foreign stay. I am trying to work out a long-term collaboration between bioinformaticians at CEITEC and the University of Malta that will work out for our mutual benefit.
On behalf of CEITEC MU, we would like to wish Panos, his wife Jill and their daughter Katerina all the best in their new destination! It was a pleasure to have worked with both of you!