Hi,
I’m Blake Sweeney. I’m an RNA scientist currently working at
EMBL-EBI as the project leader for
RNAcentral and
Rfam, two of the leading databases for
non-coding RNA. My recent work has been on
using LLMs to summarize RNA literature
and issues
facing applying deep learning
to RNA 3D structure prediction.
As the project leader, I provide the day-to-day technical and scientific leadership for the projects. Longer term strategic planning is done in collaboration with my supervisor Alex Bateman. Previously, I was the bioinformatician at RNAcentral, where I was responsible for the data pipeline. I did my Ph.D. in the Leontis-Zirbel lab at BGSU under Neocles Leontis. There I focused on implementing and extending the Representative sets and JAR3D as part of the RNA 3D Hub.
I’m planning my next steps for when my tenure at the EBI ends, so if you know of any opportunities for an experienced and knowledgeable RNA scientist please email me or ping me on LinkedIn.