Paul focuses on software development for plant genetic resources, genetics and plant breeding. He leads several projects where his research contributes towards making experimental data including plant passport, pedigree, phenotypic and genotypic data available to collaborators, research and breeding communities using a suite of database and visualization tools that his team develops. He is particularly interested in biological visualization and how data can be effectively presented, explored and accessed in logical, digestible chunks in order to gain maximum impact and insight. He is also interested in how biological entities, such as plant accessions in pedigrees, and samples in plant breeding and genetics experiments, can be visualized and modelled using graphs.
The main software resources his group develops and maintains include the informatics platforms Germinate (https://germinateplatform.github.io/get-germinate [2]) for the storage of experimental data resulting from plant germplasm collections and Helium (https://ics.hutton.ac.uk/helium [3]) for the visualization of complex plant pedigrees. His group is also active in the development of innovative mobile applications for the efficient collection of experimental data (https://cropgeeks.github.io/gridscore [4]) and tools to help with general informatics requirements of genotyping platforms such as the barley 50K SNP platform and maintaining Hutton’s seed store and Underpinning Capacity collections.
He maintains regular interactions with the international plant genetic resources community both through research interests, collaborations and involvement in international groups such as the Divseek International Network (https://divseekintl.org [5]) where Germinate is recognised as a ‘Thematic Hub` promoting the use of Germinate as a common and scalable data infrastructure platform and community focal point suited to a wide range of users who are primarily studying collections of germplasm of different sizes and complexities.
Paul works on a diverse set of projects involving other science departments at the Insitute including Cell and Molecular Sciences, Ecological Sciences and James Hutton Ltd.
Areas of Expertise
Externaly funded research projects
Other external projects
ORCID
You can get an up to date list of my current publications from this link: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0202-1150 [1]
Links:
[1] https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0202-1150
[2] https://germinateplatform.github.io/get-germinate
[3] https://ics.hutton.ac.uk/helium
[4] https://cropgeeks.github.io/gridscore
[5] https://divseekintl.org
[6] https://www.croptrust.org/work/projects/the-bold-project/
[7] https://breedingvalue.eu/
[8] https://www.croptrust.org/work/projects/the-templeton-pre-breeding-project/
[9] https://www.croptrust.org/work/projects/crop-wild-relatives/