Mission

  • Support the construction and maintenance of bioinformatics infrastructure within regional state PHLs.
  • Provide training for public health scientists on the fundamentals and practice of bioinformatics.
  • Development of bioinformatics resources including tools, pipelines, documentation.
  • Partner with the CDC and APHL to ensure compatibility and utility of our efforts.

Who we are

StaPH-B members possess a wide range bioinformatics experience, from molecular biologists gaining familiarity with NGS and web-based applications, to experienced practitioners with advanced degrees in the field capable of scripting custom tools. This diversity of experience allows StaPH-B to approach problems from a multitude of perspectives and develop high-efficacy solutions that are both technically sound, and practical to public health investigations.

Our Projects

  • Building templates for various solutions regarding state informatics infrastructure
  • Cloud computing
  • Defining communication standards between Bioinformatics specialists and Epidemiologists
  • Development and validation of bioinformatics tools for various applications:
    • NGS quality assessment
    • In silico ​ taxonomic identification, serotyping, virulence determination, and antimicrobial resistance from NGS data
    • Pathogen Metagenomics
    • Reference-free cluster analysis (pan genome based clustering)

Our History

It started with four bioinformaticians: Kevin Libuit, Sean Wang, Kelly Oakeson, and Joel Sevinsky. And by four we mean there were at least four of us bothering Heather Carleton for help with bioinformatics of enteric pathogens around winter 2016/2017. Heather suggested, probably to save herself from answering too many questions and often the same question four times, that the group of should “talk amongst ourselves”, and our contact information was shared. And that was the beginning.