“My name, Ino, is originally Frisian, but has its own meaning in many languages and countries. In India, Ino is known as antacid medication. That nicely matches the goal of my research: I want to relieve cancer researchers, physicians, and their patients.
I’m a computer scientist by trade, but during my Master’s studies in Sweden I discovered how computer science can be applied to biological research. I started out studying microbes in the Baltic Sea, and then switched my focus to human DNA. The software I develop helps researchers gain a better understanding of how the human body works. To understand how cancer develops, you need to connect many different types of data: how a protein looks, for example, and how it interacts with the surrounding cells or how it responds to a specific drug.
My research offers a way to bridge those different data sources, sometimes quite literally by linking clinical systems together. This makes data more accessible, which helps researchers move forward. Some of the tools that I helped design are now used in laboratories all over the world. That’s quite an amazing thought. I’m currently based in New York, working at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.”
Ino de Bruijn will defend his thesis on November 10.
prof. dr. G.A. Meijer & prof. dr. N. Schultz
dr. R.J.A. Fijneman & dr. J. Gao