Getting to know us: Reham from Ensembl Havana

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In July, we talked to Reham Fatima, a member of the Havana team. The Havana team carry out manual annotation on human, mouse, zebrafish and rat genomes. Reham has contributed to the MANE and GENCODE projects. Read more about Reham’s work at EMBL-EBI and what kind of cuisine she likes the most. You can also see some amazing photographs she has taken in her free time.

What do you enjoy the most about your job?

I enjoy both interacting with smart and kind colleagues, as well as the interdisciplinarity of my role itself: applying programming and performing statistical analyses on genetic data.

What is your favourite thing about working at EMBL-EBI?

The multicultural environment and international exposure. Not only do people bring a variety of ideas from all over the world, I have learnt a lot about their cultural backgrounds and home countries.

Can you share a project or accomplishment that you consider to be the most significant in your career at Ensembl so far?

I would take pride in my work on both contributing to Matched Annotation between NCBI and EMBL-EBI (MANE) and my current work on GENCODE Primary.

What inspired you to pursue a career in computational biology / bioinformatics?

I had wanted to be a scientist since I was young. It was a bit of a struggle back home as the most “acceptable” jobs at that time were either medical doctor or engineer. I did not feel I was cut out for either of them individually. I had always been intrigued with using different disciplines to solve the problems of another one. It was initially a struggle to convince my father, who was financing my education at that time. But for every job I got after my degrees, he had been immensely proud, and I would feel that was a cherry on top of my scientific job itself.

A photograph of Reham in front of King’s College in Cambridge, UK.
A photograph of Reham near Khor al Udaid in Qatar.
A photograph of Reham in Cambridge, UK.

What is your favourite way to relax and unwind after a long day at work?

Have a lovely cup of chai and a savoury snack with either watching one of my favourite TV shows or talking to a good friend.

What is your favourite type of cuisine and what do you like about it?

Pakistani food, hands down. The taste, the combinations of spices and herbs (or sugar for sweets 😀).

If you could have any superpower, what would it be and why?

Most likely flying. So I could fly to any country and back without queuing at airports and border controls 😀