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Dr Mark Bek

Position:: Lab support
Theme(s):: Immunology, Bacterial and Parasitic Infections
Discipline(s):: Computational Science and Genomics, Public Health, Clinical and health systems research
Unit(s):: Microbiological Diagnostic Unit (MDU) Public Health Laboratory

Dr Mark Bek is the Senior Leader, Information Systems and Database Management at the Microbiological Diagnostic Unit Public Health Laboratory (MDU PHL). Mark possesses qualifications in medicine, public health/epidemiology, and information technology (IT), and is interested in the application of IT to public health microbiology data and scientific computing in general. After an early period working in the operational side of public health, he now works primarily on IT analysis, design and development. He has created systems to capture, analyse and report on MDU PHL's microbiological data (sample, testing and result information). Increasingly, this requires the inclusion and integration of bacterial genomic analyses and outputs.

Key Achievements

Key Achievements
- Mark’s achievements include specifying, designing, developing and implementing a Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS) for the MDU PHL; incorporating bioinformatic results, such as genomic SNP analysis phylogenetic trees, into MDU reports; developing and implementing automated report faxing; and working with the MDU PHL’s IT team to develop and maintain in-house epidemiological and laboratory process databases. The team has also introduced substantial new bioinformatics computing capacity.