Dr David Lovell: helping transform CSIRO’s bioscience research

Dr David Lovell leads bioinformatics and analytics in CSIRO’s Transformational Biology Platform.

• 30 April 2010 | Updated 14 October 2011

• Current activities
• Background
• Academic qualifications

Current activities

The 'industrialisation of biology' is founded on new measurement platforms that enable bioscientists to generate data on living organisms at unprecedented scale and complexity. This drives changes within the bioscience research community.

CSIRO created its Transformational Biology Platform so that it may thrive in this 'omics era' and thereby accelerate the identification and translation of new scientific principles into useful technologies.

Dr David Lovell co-leads CSIRO’s Transformational Biology Platform with Professor Mark Morrison, and takes particular responsibility for bioinformatics and analytics. In this role, Dr Lovell seeks to:

• tackle the fragmentation of skills and expertise across CSIRO and in the wider quantitative bioscience community
• address impediments that are rate-limiting to the research process by strengthening CSIRO’s communities of practice, and by promoting 'scientists in residence' and early-career researcher programs
• foster catalytic bioscience projects that draw on the breadth and depth of expertise across CSIRO
• help CSIRO’s planning of, and investment in bioscience infrastructure (particularly cyberinfrastructure). This includes exploring national and international collaborations and co-investments
• increase the level and coordination of CSIRO’s linkage to allied institutions, facilities and initiatives, both within Australia and internationally.

Dr Lovell is well placed to be aware of, and empowered to act on many bioinformatics issues at an enterprise level, and is keen to help CSIRO and Australia increase the benefits that the quantitative biosciences can deliver.

Dr Lovell is a member of The European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) Australia Bioinformatics Advisory Committee and the Bioinformatics Australia Management Committee.

Dr Lovell maintains an active interest in research and is currently exploring the application of compositional data analysis methods in the molecular biosciences.

Background

Dr Lovell’s career has given him a diverse range of skills and experiences.

An electrical engineer by training, he completed postdoctoral research in perinatal risk prediction at Cambridge University before joining CSIRO in 1998.

Since then, he has been involved in a wide range of research and consulting in the analysis of large and complex datasets, worked as Executive Officer to the CEO from 2001-02, and was a member of CSIRO’s Corporate IT Management team from 2002-04.

From 2004, Dr Lovell has worked in research management within the quantitative biosciences domain, leading CSIRO Mathematics, Informatics and Statistics' Statistical Bioinformatics – Agribusiness Group (2004-07), then its Bio Research Program (2007-08), until his mid-2008 appointment as Bioinformatics and Analytics Leader for CSIRO’s Transformational Biology initiative.

Academic qualifications

Dr Lovell has been awarded a Bachelor of Electrical Engineering, a Doctor of Philosophy and a Postgraduate Diploma in Management.

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