Noah Fahlgren, PhD

Like many scientists, invested teachers became powerful mentors in Noah’s life, and helped define his career. As an undergraduate student, he started working in the lab of Dr. Jim Carrington at Oregon State University. “Before I started working in the lab, I hadn’t thought about working with plants. I became really interested in the research they were doing in the Carrington Lab, so I decided to go to graduate school and work in the lab as a PhD student,” explains Noah.

At the same time, Noah began pursuing a career in plant science, a new technology was emerging in the scientific community: high-throughput DNA sequencing. “We went from sequencing a few hundred DNA molecules at a time to doing millions at a time.” A year into grad school, the lab was collecting so much data that he began learning how to program and do data analysis with a computer. “I shifted pretty hard away from lab work at that point.” He hasn’t looked back since.

Today, Noah leads the Data Science Facility. His team builds computational tools that help other scientists solve big data problems. These custom tools could be anything from an algorithm, to a program, to the infrastructure that houses a particular suite of software tools. “A lot of times in science, you can’t just ask a question and use a tool that comes out of the box,” says Noah. As a result, he has made it his team’s mission to be a collaborative hub at the Danforth Center that creates tools that help bridge different areas of expertise.