Meet Dr Marc Lorentzen
What course do you teach on and what is your role?
I teach bioinformatics in the Cancer Biology (Cancer Informatics) MRes. I'm co-lead of the Informatics module.
How has your career led you to teaching?
In a way, my career started with teaching - doing science experiments for school kids to teach biochemistry during my undergrad. Since then I moved from wetlab experiments to computational work with next-generation sequencing, and since I joined Imperial I've moved into my role with the Cancer Biology MRes, at first helping out with demonstrations during the code workshops, before taking responsibility for the module proper.
What aspect of the course do you enjoy teaching the most?
When we can make new concepts 'click'. Most students on the course come in with a biology background, so it's a delight when we can overcome the fear of the unknown and learn the how and whys of data analysis.
What do you hope your students will go on to achieve on completion of this course?
Our students go from barely confident in Excel to coding in R and Python. Having good data analysis tools is invaluable in research (and outside it), and we're here to guide our students at that critical time of being brand new to coding to a point where they become independent problem solvers.
What is your favourite part about teaching at Imperial College London?
The high quality of our incoming students. Everyone is here to do the best they can, and it shows.
Find out more and apply for our MRes Cancer Biology (Cancer Informatics).