astronomy

Terri Attwood

Terri Attwood is a astronomy topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Terri Attwood rather than just read about it. In short: Teresa K. Attwood (born 20 November 1959) is a professor of Bioinformatics in the Department of Computer Science and School of Biological Sciences at the University of Manchester and a visiting fellow at the European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI).

Key takeaways

Terri Attwood belongs to astronomy; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Terri Attwood to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Terri Attwood from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Teresa K. Attwood (born 20 November 1959) is a professor of Bioinformatics in the Department of Computer Science and School of Biological Sciences at the University of Manchester and a visiting fellow at the European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI). She held a Royal Society University Research Fellowship at University College London (UCL) from 1993 to 1999 and at the University of Manchester from 1999 to 2002.

Education Attwood gained her Bachelor of Science in Biophysics from the University of Leeds in 1982. She was awarded a PhD, also in Biophysics, two years later, in 1984 under the supervision of John E. Lydon studying chromonic mesophases.

Research and career Attwood undertook postdoctoral research at Leeds until 1993, when she moved to University College London for five years before moving to the University of Manchester in 1999. Her research concerns protein sequence alignment and protein analysis. Inspired by the creation of PROSITE, Attwood developed a method of protein fingerprinting and used this to establish the PRINTS database. With Amos Bairoch she sought to unify work on protein family classification and annotation, eventually jointly securing a European Union grant with Rolf Apweiler to establish InterPro, with Pfam, ProDom and Swiss-Prot/TrEMBL as consortium partners in 1997. Attwood has led major projects including the BioMinT FP5 text-mining consortium, the EMBER bioinformatics education consortium (including EBI and Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics as partners), and the EPSRC PARADIGM Platform. She is the Manchester principal investigator on projects SeqAhead (Next-generation sequencing data analysis network) and AllBio (bioinformatics infrastructure for unicellular, animal and plant sciences), and was also Manchester PI on EMBRACE and EuroKUP (kidney and urine proteomics). Attwood was a member of ELIXIR's Bioinformatics Training Strategy Committee (Work Package 11) during ELIXIR's preparatory phase. She is currently Chair of the EMBnet Global Bioinformatics Network, she was a member of the Executive Committees of the International Society for Biocuration, and the Bioinformatics Training Network, and was recently elected to the Board of Directors of the International Society for Computational Biology. In 2012, she spearheaded the establishment of a GOBLET (Global Organisation for Bioinformatics Learning, Education and Training), with the major bioinformatics, computational biology and biocuration societies, networks and organisations as partners. As of 2016, Attwood is the Chair of the GOBLET Executive Board. As well as being a biocurator she has co-developed tools to align and visualise protein sequences and structures, including Ambrosia and CINEMA. The group are building re-usable software components to create useful bioinformatics applications through UTOPIA (Bioinformatics tools), and are developing new approaches for automatic annotation and text mining, like PRECIS, METIS, BioIE, and semantic approaches to data integration, such as the Semantic Biochemical Journal published by Portland Press. The UTOPIA tools underpin both the Semantic Biochemical Journal and a collaborative project with Pfizer and AstraZeneca to develop a 21st-century interface to biomedical literature and data management. Attwood's research has received funding from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, the Wellcome Trust, the Royal Society, the European Union and industry.

Teaching Attwood teaches on undergraduate and postgraduate courses and has been doctoral advisor or co-supervisor to several PhD students (e.g., Manuel Corpas). Attwood has co-authored several book chapters and three popular bioinformatics textbooks: Introduction to Bioinformatics and Bioinformatics and Molecular Evolution. Attwood is a co-author of the bioinformatics textbook Bioinformatics Challenges at the Interface of Biology and Computer Science: Mind the Gap with Steve Pettifer and Dave Thorne.

Academic service Attwood serves on the editorial board of the Biochemical Journal, Database: The Journal of Biological Databases and Curation, Molecular and Cellular Proteomics, the Journal of Molecular Graphics and Modelling and the EMBnet.journal.

Awards and honours Attwood held a Royal Society University Research Fellowship (URF) from 1993 to 2002.

References

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Terri Attwood

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Terri Attwood claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In astronomy, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Terri Attwood before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Terri Attwood ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Terri Attwood

In research: Terri Attwood appears in astronomy research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Terri Attwood in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Terri Attwood is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1959 births, 20th-century British women scientists, 21st-century British women scientists, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Terri Attwood outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Terri Attwood in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Terri Attwood means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Terri Attwood out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Terri Attwood in simple terms?

Why does Terri Attwood matter?

Because it connects several astronomy ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Terri Attwood?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Terri Attwood.