Hi! I'm Tommy Tang
I am a bioinformatician/computational biologist with six years of wet lab experience and over 12 years of computation experience. I will help you to learn computational skills to tame astronomical data and derive insights. Check out the resources I offer below and sign up for my newsletter!
The Hardest Part of Bioinformatics? an under-rated skill you will learn in this newsletter
Hello Bioinformatics lovers, Another week passed by. I often feel how time flies. When I look at how fast my three kids grow, I realize how "old" I became. whew...I will turn 40 next year! I started learning bioinformatics at 28. The other day I went to a Chinese restaurant and got this fortune cookie message: Every once in a while, we all need the encouragement I think it is awesome to be a cheerleader for those who want to learn bioinformatics. I knew I needed it when I started. Technical...
How Unrelated Skills Shaped My Bioinformatics Career (You Won’t Expect This)
Hello Bioinformatics lovers, Tommy here again. Do you feel eager to receive my emails on Saturdays? At least, it now become my habit. I will open the email and fire it up. Today, I will share how seemingly unrelated skills shaped my bioinformatics career. ( I will have all my week's long posts linked in the end too). I never set out to be a bioinformatician. In fact, I started my career at the bench, pipetting away in a wet lab, studying epigenetics in cancer. Back then, I had no idea that a...
Why Bioinformatics is complicated
Hello Bioinformatics lovers, I can not believe it is already the second month of 2025! I want to grab every opportunity to remind you that it is never too late to start learning. ( I wrote this tutorial to show you how to analyze TCGA bulk RNAseq data, Enjoy! ) For those who celebrate the Lunar New Year, Happy New Year! It is the year of the snake. My wife wrote the couplets: Upper couplet: The Snake breathes auspicious energy, bringing peace and fortune to the home.Lower couplet: Wealth...
Mastering the Essentials of Bioinformatics
Dear Bioinformatics lovers, Looking at bioinformaticians’ profiles today, it seems like everyone is immersed in cutting-edge single-cell analyses and AI-driven bioinformatics. It’s inspiring to see how far the field has come, but amidst all the buzz, something crucial is often overlooked—the fundamentals of bioinformatics. Why Fundamentals Still Matter Basic bioinformatics skills, like exploratory data analysis (EDA) and data sanity checks, seem to be losing the spotlight. Everyone’s talking...
R, Python, or Unix? The Bioinformatics Toolkit You Need
Hello Bioinformatics lovers, Whether you're just starting or deep into bioinformatics, one question always looms large:Which tools should you master first? R vs Python: Which Should You Learn? Many beginners ask me this, and honestly, the answer depends on your needs. Let me share my journey: I started learning Unix commands over a decade ago, followed by Python through Python for Absolute Beginners. While Python taught me programming fundamentals (like print("hello world")), it wasn’t...
It's here! end to end tutorial to replicate a genomics figure
Hello Bioinformatics lovers, Ten days into 2025, how are you executing your goals? I am committed to posting a long-form post every day in 2025. Below you can find the links to the posts from the past week. I promised to write an end-to-end tutorial to replicate a genomics figure during the holidays. It is now here! https://crazyhottommy.github.io/reproduce_genomics_paper_figures/ If you are curious about what I used to make the website, it is workflowr https://github.com/workflowr/workflowr....
How to achieve your New year's goal to learn bioinformatics?
Hello Bioinformatics lovers, Happy New Year! It is 2025 already. That means it is time to set up your goals. To achieve your goals, this is the framework: Eliminate the distractions, take actions, find an efficient way to do it, maintain the efficiency So, you need to get rid of the distractions and take action Now! For example, I have told you many times to build yourself a website to showcase your bioinformatics portfolio. How many of you have done that? (Thanks to those who sent me your...
Building Your Bioinformatics Journey, One Step at a Time
Hello Bioinformatics lovers, Happy Holidays! I hope you enjoyed this time reflect on your learning in 2024 and have a plan for 2025. No skyscraper is built in a day. It takes careful planning, hard work, and the efforts of countless workers, floor by floor. Learning bioinformatics—or any skill—follows the same principle. Be eager to take action, but be patient with the results. Mastery often requires years of consistent practice. Take Unix skills, for example. It's an essential tool for...
The blueprint of reproducing a genomics paper figure
Hello Bioinformatics lovers, Happy Holidays! We had a big snow in Boston. Early in the morning, my in-law told me our neighbor was helping us to remove the snow using a gas snow blower. I went out and said thanks. He told me that he liked helping others. I can tell the pure JOY from his words. Helping others is helping yourself. “Giving roses to others leaves fragrance on your hands.” Enough for the life-lessons :) How are you going to spend the holidays? For me, I am writing the end-to-end...
Good to great bioinformatician, how?
Hello Bioinformatics lovers, Holidays are here! I hope you get some rest and recharge during the break! How can one become a great bioinformatician? I know many of you are beginners. If you want to know how to start, please read this blog post: My opinionated selection of books/urls for bioinformatics/data science curriculum. In summary, you need to learn Unix commands and R/python languages. Those are the basic skills you need to have first. But let's suppose you already know the basics,...
I am a bioinformatician/computational biologist with six years of wet lab experience and over 12 years of computation experience. I will help you to learn computational skills to tame astronomical data and derive insights. Check out the resources I offer below and sign up for my newsletter!