User:SteveChervitzTrutane

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Welcome to my Wikipedia user page!

Stephen Chervitz Trutane is my official, legal name though it was originally Stephen Allen Chervitz, as described here. So you might know me as having the surname Trutane or as Chervitz, depending on what era of my life or circle of friends you know me from. I respond to either, so use whichever one you want. For simplicity, you can just call me "Steve".

Contents

[edit] Brief Bio

I work at Omicia as a bioinformatics software engineer, providing tools for analysis of variations within individual human genomes within a clinical context. Prior to that, I worked at Affymetrix as a bioinformatics engineer since November 2000 (when Affy acquired Neomorphic where I worked since Sep 1998), so computers and data are my friends. I got my Ph.D. doing wet-lab, molecular biology experiments in Prof. Joseph Falke's lab at CU Boulder, though my official degree is from the MCDB Department. After Boulder, I shifted directions into the world of genomics (or post-genomics) joining David Botstein's lab (while he was at Stanford) working on the Saccharomyces Genome Database (S. cerevisiae was the first eukaryote to have it's genome completely sequenced, which happened in April 1996, about 3 months after I started with SGD). While at SGD, I developed lots of Perl modules for working with bioinformatics data and contributed most of this code to the open source BioPerl project, which was just getting started around this time. I continue to stay in touch with BioPerl but am no longer doing active code development. I'm actively involved with the FGED Society, BioDAS, GenoViz, and take an interest in the goings-on of the HCLS and other semantic web efforts.

In my spare time, when I'm not having fun with my family, training for triathlons, promoting health and fitness, tweeting, blogging, or contributing to Wikipedia, I do what I can to help humanity with the organization I founded, TeamHuman.org, still largely a work in progress. Wikipedia, I feel, is well-aligned with the "promoting a shared understanding" goal of TeamHuman.org.

[edit] My Wikipedia Story

When I was a kid I used to browse a physical encyclopedia (I think it was a World Book Encyclopedia ca. 1974), reading random pages here and there. One day when I was 13 or 14 years old, I came across a page that changed my life, specifically a section describing molecular biology. It blew me away that we humans have figured out the genetic code, a code that nearly all cells on earth use for creating proteins from DNA. My teachers had never mentioned the topic at all! The rest of my life has essentially been following up on what I stumbled up on that day, pursuing a Ph.D. and now working at a genome analysis company.

I've been contributing to English wikipedia sporadically for the past few years and enjoy the feeling that I'm creating a knowledge resource that will be read and augmented by others, and persist over time. Perhaps I will add content that will inspire someone else and alter the course of their life as mine was altered long ago by that static encyclopedia. It almost feels like I'm giving back to the encyclopedia gods that led me to where I am today. Sure, wikipedia has issues, but I have seen it evolve and self-correct over time via community input, keeping up with our evolving state of knowledge in real time -- and it's available worldwide via the internet for free. Awesome.

[edit] Support Wikipedia!

[edit] Wikipedia contributions

Here are a few highlights of my contributions. I don't update this page very frequently, so check here for the complete listing of what I've been up to lately.

I still consider myself to be cutting my teeth as a Wikipedia editor (though Wikipedia considers me established enough to edit some semi-protected pages, such as Barack Obama, which I have edited on occasion). Many of my Wikipedia contributions focus on my domains of expertise:

However, I have wide-ranging interests so you may find my edits outside these areas, in odd corners of Wikipedia.

[edit] Some pages I've created

[edit] Some pages I've contributed substantially to

  • Science
    • Genome annotation (I wrote a page related to this on the original Wikiomics site, now folded into OpenWetWare.)
    • Retrotransposon (Verified and added citation supporting claim that 42% of the human genome is made up of these buggers.)
    • Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act and Genetic discrimination
    • War on Cancer (I've greatly expanded this from stub state starting in Oct 2008. Continues to be a work in progress.)
      • I initially redirected it to Nat'l Cancer Act of '71, then decided it was better to redirect the other way around.
      • On 2 Oct 2009, I participated in the Lance Armstrong Foundation's "LIVESTRONG Day" by registering a virtual event where did my part to raise cancer awareness by inviting people to the WoC wikipedia page. Not sure if anyone noticed.
      • Some google stats on WoC searches as of 2 Oct 09: the WP page is now on the first page of results, though near the bottom. I take this as a sign of progress of my efforts, as the WoC page has usually been quite distant from the top when I've checked earlier this year. Total google WoC hits on 2 Oct 09: 45M (unquoted), 135k (quoted). Update 3 Nov 2009: WoC page is now #2 out of 47.5M total (unquoted) and #3 out of 327K (quoted). Hot topic! Update 13 Nov 2009: WoC page is now #1 out of 52.3M total (unquoted) and #2 out of 142K (quoted -- the previous 327k seems anomalous).
    • Gene expression techniques
    • Genetic disorder
    • Cancer and inflammation discussion
    • FGED Society (Major re-write, page rename. Formerly known as 'MGED')
    • Affymetrix (My former employer)
  • Non-science
    • Jack LaLanne
    • Joe Ranft (Added death section after watching Cars.)
      • On my todo list is to get a public domain photo of Joe to put on his page. I have a Pixar contact that has promised to help (August 2009).
      • Some of my original contribution on Joe's page has since been removed on the basis of being WP:OR or WP:POV. I'm not sure about this removal, since I'm pointing out a coincidental fact between the circumstances of his death and a major theme of the movie he was making when he died. Here's what I said: The road on which Joe died, Highway 1, is akin to Route 66 featured in Cars in the way it "works/moves with the land" (quote from movie). Meandering along the scenic California coastline, Highway 1 is a very much a road where appreciating the journey is as important as reaching one's destination, a theme of Cars. Maybe I'll bring this up on Joe's talk page.
    • Scat singing (In the "Origin" section, I added the Jelly Roll Morton quote from Alan Lomax interview.)
    • Cantillation and Hebrew language (Posted links to audio example of cantillation I uploaded to Wikimedia Commons. Had to convert the mp3 I got from Cantor Seth into Ogg format. A little tricky.)

[edit] Assorted contributions

[edit] Sandbox

[edit] External Links

[edit] Other Notes

[edit] Users of note

(This is not an exhaustive list, mind; just a few folks I've come across here and there)

[edit] Projects

Nucleus ER.png This user is a member of the Molecular & Cellular Biology WikiProject
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