Matthew Hartley leads the BioImage Archive, a deposition database set up by EMBL’s European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI) with the aim of making imaging data associated with publications FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable). This is set to improve the reproducibility of studies that involve bioimages. 

In a recent interview, Hartley shared his experience and tips for managing a bioinformatics core facility. 

Tell us a little bit about your background.

Before joining EMBL-EBI I led the informatics platform at the John Innes Centre, which is a research institute that focuses on plant and microbial science. My role was to manage a team of core facility bioinformaticians and data experts to solve problems and provide internal services for the institutes. 

What were some of your biggest challenges as a core facilities scientist?

One of the biggest challenges is that bioinformatics is a collection of different fields – structural biology, genomics, chemical biology, etc – and they’re all moving very quickly. New techniques are coming online almost daily, there are lots of new data types, so keeping up with the deluge of new things is very difficult. And it’s particularly difficult if you’re doing it on your own.  

I found it really helpful to attend the Bioinformatics for core facilities management course at EMBL-EBI because it gave me an overview of the types of projects and problems that other facilities managers are working on. It also helped with the isolating nature of core facilities management. Having a group of people that had the same problems to discuss with was very helpful from a practical point of view, but also emotionally, to help understand you’re not alone. 

So you’ve gone from being a participant of the course to being a trainer. Did you gain any transferable skills from the course that are useful in your current role at EMBL-EBI? 

Definitely, one of the major areas is managing teams of people who are both technical specialists and scientists. There’s a lot of balancing those two directions, which I learned a lot about in the course. 

The other transferable skill that comes to mind is managing data. Often core facilities are the guardians of good data practice in their institutions and have to train others on how to do this. The course was great at explaining what some of the challenges are and how to overcome them. This is what I’m doing in my current role in the BioImage Archive. 

Do you think there is enough support for people who want to enter scientific service roles?

I think it’s an area that is improving. One of the challenges is that it’s not necessarily obvious that these kinds of service provision roles exist. 

A big development, which I think is helping people make the switch to provision of service and technology roles, is EMBL’s ARISE programme, which is a three-year career-accelerator fellowship for people who want to lead service providing research infrastructures. ARISE provides a lot of great training, but also opportunities to do technology development directly. 

What advice would you give a core facility scientist?

Find colleagues, find a mentor or people who can understand the challenges you’re facing and who can support you. Everything else comes with practice. 

If you’re interested in managing a bioinformatics core facility, consider taking EMBL-EBI’s dedicated training course. 

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