Dr Lajos Kalmar

Biography:

Lajos Kalmar graduated as a Zoologist / Microbiologist at the University of Veterinary Medicine (Budapest, Hungary). During his PhD at the Semmelweis University (Budapest, Hungary), he worked as an experimental scientist in the field of human genetics and discovered several novel disease causing mutations in hereditary angioneurotic oedema (HAE). He started his transition from in vitro to in silico field at the end of his PhD by establishing a locus specific mutational database for the SERPING1 gene. Lajos spent his first long postdoc period (2007-2015) at the Institute of Enzymology of the Hungarian Academy of sciences where he investigated the structural and functional evolution of proteins (particularly intrinsically disordered proteins) using bioinformatics tools. He joined the University of Cambridge in 2015 and worked as a research associate in Dr David Sargan group at the Department of Veterinary Medicine investigating the genetic background of brachycephalic obstructive airway syndrome (BOAS) in dogs, using state-of-the-art genomics techniques. In 2018, as a senior research associate, he joined Professor Mark Holmes’s group in the same department and worked on microbial genomics and metagenomics for 2.5 years. He established a complete bioinformatics pipeline for the Hi-C assisted metagenomics, a technique that can be used to assign mobile genetic element (e.g. plasmids) to their host genome in complex microbial communities. Lajos joined the MRC Toxicology Unit in the beginning of 2021 as the manager of the core Bioinformatics Facility.

Research Interests:

By managing and maintaining the bioinformatics facility, my task is to provide continuous bioinformatics support for every member of the Unit. I am doing personal support and supervision, small group trainings and perform complete bioinformatics projects, depending on the needs of group leaders senior and junior researchers.