Paul Hengen
Paul has equal experience at the lab bench developing molecular genetics assays and at the computer gaining biological insights and designing experiments using computational techniques. Having BS and MS degrees in Microbiology and a PhD in Molecular Genetics, Paul moved into Computational Biology and Bioinformatics through his interest in DNA sequence analysis. He is perhaps best known for his monthly column in Trends in Biochemical Sciences (TiBS) on Molecular Biology Methods and Reagents. Over the past 25+ years, he has worked for many academic, biotech, and pharmaceutical companies, including The National Cancer Institute, City of Hope National Medical Center, UC-San Francisco, USC Medical School, Applied Biosystems, NanoString Technologies, PerkinElmer, Gilead Sciences, Rancho Biosciences, Genentech, Aduro Biotech, and Qiagen. When not tickling the keys on his computer, Paul enjoys listening to Rockabilly music, playing the drums, and Swing dancing Jitterbug, Lindy Hop, Collegiate Shag, and Balboa styles.
Articles by Paul Hengen
As well as having had some negative work experiences, I’ve also had the pleasure of working with some wonderful people, including some of my previous bosses. Life is too short to deal with some of the idiosyncrasies described in Suzanne’s previous article on bad bosses. So let’s balance the scale and look at what it…
Looking for cheaper or faster solutions in the lab? Here’s our top 10 list of ways to use everyday items to make gadgets and for low-tech solutions for the lab.
The manner in which some people orchestrate their daily activities is sheer poetry. Unfortunately, I’m not one of those people. I need help…and lots of it. So I put a lot of thought into managing my To-Do Lists, and here I’ll share with you what I have learned. Most people I know in industry use…
I love that word. Transmogrified. It sounds like something Rob Grant and Doug Naylor, the writers of the sci-fi comedy series, Red Dwarf, would make up. As in, “Kryten and I were transmogrified into another time dimension”. Anyway, enough of 80’s cult TV shows. If you are still with me after the last two articles…
Most available heatmap programs I’ve encountered cost too much, come bundled in a huge application, don’t do what I want, or don’t offer enough flexibility. In the previous article on heatmaps, I showed how you can use ASAP utilities to sort color-coded cells using this useful Excel Add-in. What I didn’t tell you is how…
Heat maps are a useful way to represent certain types of data; the data are colored by coloring according to the values in them, (e.g. red for high values, yellow for medium and green for low values), providing a powerful visual representation of a data set. This allows you to quickly see results from DNA…
For our “fresh new” version of the website, I’ll kick off with a series of articles on describing the contents of my professional “toolbox”. So, let’s open ‘er up and see what we get. In this installment, I’ll skim the top tray and produce my list of basic gizmos that, just like beer and pizza,…