Keith Bradnam

Overview

For nearly two decades I was closely involved with the field of genomics research, ever since I first started my career in bioinformatics back in 1993. As a research scientist I published a number of papers and helped lead some interesting research projects. I also did lots of teaching to students at all levels and co-authored a book on how to teach programming skills to biologists.

Increasingly, my work shifted to communicating about research, and I ultimately realised that maybe I was a better science communicator than scientist. This realisation saw me leave science research in 2016 and move full-time into science communication. Continuing on this path I’ve now ditched the science part (see my latest position below), but I like to think that I still bring a lot of scientific approaches to how I gather and analyse data.

I am passionate about Open Science, the Oxford comma, and adding milk first when making tea.

My current position

Since mid-2020, I have been the Digital Transformation Manager at The Royal College of Psychiatrists in London. I help develop and manage our digital communication channels to effectively communicate to our various stakeholders. Primarily. this includes includes psychiatrists (and potential psychiatrists) as well as anyone interested in mental health policy. But the large amount of mental health resources we have - many translated into several languages - means that we truly have a global audience for people seeking help and guidance on all manner of mental health issues..

Where I (used to) write

I have created many blogs, most of which are now dormant. I used to regularly write - several times a week! - about genomics and bioinformatics on my ACGT blog. I once also tried to develop web-based comic that aimed to educate and entertain people about various scientific topics. The Take-Home Message comics were drawn by the talented Abby Yu, and I wrote the accompanying posts and helped come up with ideas for new comics.