Over the past five years, Broad Genomics has been the largest producer of human genomic information in the world. As of this writing, the group is producing genomic data at a rate of one 30X human whole genome every 12 minutes. The group has processed more than 1.5 million samples from more than 1400 groups in over 50 countries.

Broad Genomics has pioneered methods development, rapid, and nimble implementation of new instruments, and continuous improvement of massively parallel sequencing since the advent of the technology less than a decade ago. From receiving the first alpha Solexa instrument (installed 9 years ago) to the first HiSeqX10 platform, the group has driven technology innovation by improving processes, inventing applications, and creating rigorous quality measures – and sharing these developments with the scientific community.

In addition to technology and process innovation, Broad Genomics is responsible for the development and dissemination of tools and methods for data analysis, such as the Genome Analysis Toolkit (GATK), a software package for processing and analysis of sequencing data. The GATK-based workflow for variant detection has over 30,000 registered individual users and has been run more than 800 million times by users outside of the Broad Institute.   

Broad Genomics is comprised of approximately 200 people across several functional groups:

Alliance and Project Management

The Alliance and Project Management team interacts with both internal and external researchers to ensure that all goals related to genomics projects are achieved. The project managers are a point of contact for all of the Broad Genomics groups, translating research aims into specific work orders, setting specific dates and milestones, and coordinating data delivery. The team also provides genomic education, technical experiment design, tracking, and reporting on project progress.

Data Operations

The Data Operations team orchestrates and supports highly automated daily genomics lab work and continuous process improvement at massive scale. The team creates and tracks everything from projects, products, and orders to individual samples and process steps, ensuring that both high-level and granular data are captured, tracked, and reported back to all stakeholders. This is possible using a homegrown Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS) and other tools.

Knowledge Design and User Experience (KDUX)

KDUX builds portals and public user interfaces for scientific tools and projects. The KDUX community works collaboratively to leverage their complementary skillsets (engineering, graphic design, user experience, content generation, visualization) to get data and access to those who need it.

Lab Operations

Process oriented, the LabOps team leverages lean manufacturing methodologies to provide sequence data of the utmost quality at massive scale. LabOps has technical expertise spanning genomic data generation, with a particular emphasis on sample extraction, sample storage, library construction, sequencing, genotyping, and robotics.

Product and Process Development

Product and process development is spread across several teams including R&D, Technology Development, Exploratory R&D, Clinical Development, and Portfolio Management. Reading the trends in biotech, and listening to the needs of the Broad research community, the Product Development family designs the next gen techniques and processes that will enable the next generation of genomic research.

Services

Broad Genomic Services is the external facing branch of Broad Genomics, providing the global community access to the same genomic tools and resources as are used by the Broad community, as fee for service.

Technical Operations

TechOps encompasses disciplines that "make the infrastructure work," Everything from running and maintaining cloud infrastructure, deploying code, security, and scalability all roll into this group. TechOps makes sure that when developers build code, that it works, works well, and works securely.