My name is Glen van den Bergen. I’m a finishing PhD student at The University of Queensland, Australia.

As someone whose main interest is technology, you wouldn’t know that I spent most of my childhood getting lost in the jungles of a small tropical island called Bougainville, somewhere in the Pacific Ocean. Then as a teenager living in Malaysia, before the Internet, after waking up to the morning prayer played over a loud speaker at the nearby mosque, I had lots of free time to spend at the sports park swimming, playing squash, badminton, and going bowling. And yet, ever since I could press the Start button on a game controller, technology is something I’ve always taken a keen interest in.

In my PhD project I developed computational models of antimicrobial peptides and optimised properties important to their function. I used evolution-based optimisation algorithms and computer simulations to investigate the molecular details of these types of peptides, generating terabytes of data requiring processing, analysis, and visualisation. Through this research I have gained an understanding in the value of data and how it can inform evidence-based decision making. I want to apply these skills to solve challenges in data orchestration and iterative model deployment to production systems, to deliver efficiency and insight.

During my free time when I’m not tinkering with projects on the Raspberry Pi or reading articles on news.ycombinator.com I’m either indulging my 3 year old son’s obsession with dinosaurs at the museum, baking sourdough bread, putting on a batch of homebrew, or gardening.

More detail about what I’ve done and what I’m interested in is in my resume.