EMBL researcher Dr. Reinhard Schneider will set up the bioinformatics core at LCSB. The Luxembourg Centre for Systems Biomedicine (LCSB) has brought yet another internationally renowned scientist into the country: Dr. Reinhard Schneider is switching from the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg to the University of Luxembourg. He will set up and lead the central bioinformatics core of the LCSB. “We are very happy to have won Reinhard Schneider for this task”, Professor Rudi Balling, Director of the LCSB, says: “The bioinformatics core will become a central interface for biomedical research. To have acquired a scientist as outstanding as Reinhard Schneider for the LCSB is phantastic.”

In the central bioinformatics core of the LCSB, which Reinhard Schneider will lead, data from laboratory research will merge with models from computer based bio-research. Schneider’s team will design techniques and programmes for improved data analysis. This way, work in both areas - laboratory and computer based research – will become more efficient. Additionally, the systems biological understanding of diseases like Parkinson’s is to be improved: “Such diseases are highly complex networks”, Reinhard Schneider says. “We can only comprehend them and design new diagnostic and treatment procedures if we use experimental data to model disease processes on the computer. And then in turn improve laboratory experiments by using the computer models.” This, he says, is the prerequisite for finding central switches in the course of illnesses, which can be exploited for effective diagnoses and treatment. Schneider adds: ”Then we can influence a disease much earlier in its individual course and maybe one day heal it, instead of merely treating the symptoms.

”The bioinformaticians in Schneider‘s department come from very different academic backgrounds - from biology and biochemistry, mathematics and physics, all the way to medicine. “All of them have a good sense for computer science and the manipulation of large volumes of data”, Schneider says, “In addition, they have the ability to conscientiously listen to researchers in other fields - it’s the only way we can succeed in bridging biology, computer and medical science.”

Reinhard Schneider’s expectations regarding his coworkers reflect his own occupational history. The biology graduate had already been using computers for his data analysis at a time when many scientists still considered this completely pointless: “As a student, I started using a Commodore C64 in laboratory courses that I led, in order to evaluate experiments on the computer. Some professors have advised me against going into bioinformatics, because there would hardly be any job offers in that field.” But Schneider had foreseen the upcoming growth - the entry of IT into biology was unstoppable. He therefore quickly specialized, against all opposing advice, entirely in bioinformatics, his knowledge in biology proving to be advantageous: “I know what is important in the lab and I can adjust computer science accordingly.” 

This is how, for his diploma thesis, Reinhard Schneider already worked at the institution for molecular biology, the EMBL. There, he graduated in 1994 and spent his first Post-doc period. Part of his research work resulted in the creation of the bioinformatics company LION bioscience AG. During his time at LION, he spent two years in Boston, Massachusetts, USA, where he set up and lead a team of experts in early drug research for Bayer AG. Later, Schneider, as IT executive officer for LION, was responsible for the worldwide software development with almost 200 employees. In 2004 he left, returning to basic research at the EMBL, where he became team leader of the group “Data integration and knowledge management”.

Today, high performance computers have become indispensable in biomedical research. The LCSB too, employs so-called high throughput technologies in its laboratories to analyse genomes, proteins and metabolic products in large volumes - with the result that tremendous amounts of data can be generated: “Bioinformatics can no longer be performed on one computer”, Schneider explains his future work: “Therefore, we will probably soon have one of the largest computer and data storage systems in an academic setting in Luxembourg.” Sooner or later, thousands of computer processors will be necessary and several petabytes of storage capacity, Schneider says, to perform the calculations. For classification: one petabyte equals a million gigabytes.„

In the next years in systems biology, the crucial question is who will be best at merging and combining the high throughput methods in biology and medicine with the immense requirements for hard- and software”, Reinhard Schneider describes this challenge: „In Luxembourg I see a real chance of achieving this, and I believe that, in a couple of years, our team at the LCSB will belong to the world’s best institutes in this field”. Rudi Balling, the head of the institute, is excited about Schneider’s aspiration: “We are happy to have such an expert in our LCSB team, helping us to ensure that our biomedical research will be of real use to patients in hospitals.”