Max Verbiest is a software developer in the EVE group at the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute (Swiss TPH). He is also a member of the Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics, working to develop software tools to support public health as part of the Pathogen Data Network.

Max grew up in the Netherlands, where he studied Biomedical Sciences (BSc.) and Bioinformatics and Systems Biology (MSc.) at the University of Amsterdam and the VU Amsterdam. Following this, he did his PhD in computational cancer genomics at the Zurich University of Applied Sciences and the University of Zurich. Here, his work focussed investigating the role of short tandem repeat mutations in colorectal cancer. During the course of his doctoral studies, Max got more and more interested in developing scientific software to support academic research. This led him to join the EVE lab as a software developer, where he now works on tools to enable the open sharing and analysis of human viral pathogen data.

Max’ main passion outside of work is playing guitar and writing music. He also enjoys playing video games, reading, hiking in the Swiss Alps, and plumbing the depths of Wikipedia rabbit holes.