Virustic2
BetaQuality-aware Rust viral unitig assembly with streaming compressed input, paired-end validation, deterministic parallel output, and atomic reporting.
- Rust
- Viral genomics
- FASTQ
William T. Barker, PhD
I work on difficult systems: real and imagined.
I help life sciences organizations turn complex evidence into better decisions through SignalForge Advisors. I also write technically grounded science fiction about technology, institutions, belief, and the people forced to live inside the systems they create.
- Chemistry
- Microbiology
- Virology
- Bioinformatics
- AI and Data Systems
- Speculative Fiction
Two Paths
One way of thinking. Two kinds of work.
My professional and creative work begin in the same place: a complicated system, incomplete information, and decisions that have consequences. SignalForge addresses those problems in the real world. My fiction asks what happens when the system is new, the stakes are larger, and the rules have changed.
Scientific and Technical Advisory
SignalForge Advisors
Scientist-led advisory work for organizations facing difficult questions in life sciences, data, AI, and research operations. SignalForge turns technical complexity into evidence that leaders can evaluate and decisions that teams can act on.
Explore Advisory WorkNovels and Speculative Systems
Science Fiction
Novels about intelligent systems, inherited missions, belief, institutional power, first contact, and the gap between what people intend and what their creations make inevitable.
View the NovelsSignalForge Advisors
Turning complex science into decision-grade signal.
SignalForge Advisors is an independent, scientist-led advisory practice for pharma, biotech, diagnostics, medtech, CRO, and life sciences R&D teams.
I work where technical uncertainty has become a strategic problem: the evidence is fragmented, the data are difficult, or the next decision carries more weight than the available signal appears to support. The work produces a clearer account of what is known, what remains uncertain, and what the evidence justifies doing next.
Scientific Diligence and Strategy
Evaluate evidence, technical claims, and scientific risk, then convert them into explicit decision criteria.
Bioinformatics and Omics
Design and assess reproducible workflows for transcriptomics, viral genomics, and sequencing data.
AI and Data Strategy
Identify tractable use cases, assess data readiness, and define evaluation standards worth trusting.
Scientific Communication
Translate complex technical material into narratives leaders can act on without erasing uncertainty.
Medicinal Chemistry·Microbiology·Antibiotic Resistance·Influenza Virology·Vaccine R&D·Reverse Genetics·Transcriptomics·Viral Genomics·Machine Learning·
Bring me the complicated version.
The full engagement model lives on the SignalForge site. If the problem crosses scientific, computational, and strategic boundaries, that is usually where the useful work begins.
Technical Work
Open-source scientific software designed around real workflow constraints.
I build compact, auditable tools in Rust, Python, and Bash for sequencing, scientific data engineering, model evaluation, and research infrastructure. The projects below emphasize deterministic behavior, explicit input contracts, inspectable artifacts, meaningful tests, and clear limitations. They are public reference implementations and research prototypes, not clinical systems.
Antigenic Audit
Research prototypeAudits influenza virus and antiserum evaluations for entity leakage, reversed-role leakage, and temporal overclaiming.
- Python
- Influenza
- Model evaluation
RefAudit
Early releaseCompares downstream results across reference genomes and reports coverage, agreement, rank stability, sign flips, and status changes.
- Rust
- Reproducibility
- Reference genomes
CohortShift
Reference implementationLeakage-resistant expanding-window evaluation and drift reporting for longitudinal tabular classifiers.
- Python
- Temporal validation
- Data drift
LocusVault
Reference implementationAuditable SQLite warehousing for isolate metadata and FASTA records with provenance, idempotent ingestion, and deterministic export.
- Python
- SQLite
- Provenance
HPCtools
ToolkitSafer Slurm utilities for batch rendering, linting, dependency chains, monitoring, diagnostics, and ownership-checked cancellation.
- Bash
- Slurm
- HPC
Additional work includes SeqSketch, PhredCraft, ResidueLedger, SeqFormer Lab, PromptQuarry, LineSieve, and other scientific software experiments. Browse all repositories
Demonstrated in public projects
Rust · Python · SQLite/SQL · PyTorch · Bash · Slurm
Additional professional experience
R · Docker · Singularity · AWS · GCP
Fiction
The machinery matters. The consequences remain human.
I write technically grounded, systems-oriented science fiction about technology, institutions, belief, and the people forced to live inside the machinery they create. The speculative ideas operate as working systems, with capabilities, limits, costs, failure modes, and consequences, while character, mystery, and human choice remain at the center.
SOFTMAX
PRIVATE BETA EDITION · 100 COPIES · 75,000 WORDS
A near-future thriller about AI governance, contested identity, grief, and institutional power. Its world is shaped by systems built to keep humanity safe, and by the people who discover that safety, control, and consent are not the same thing.
Intimate in scale and systemic in consequence, SOFTMAX asks what remains of human agency when memory, authority, and personhood can all be administered.
The private beta edition is not commercially available.
The Gospel According to Greg
FULL DRAFT · 76,000 WORDS
A well-intentioned but unstable Southern Baptist preacher from rural North Carolina decides that the Great Commission should apply beyond Earth. The missionary archive he sends into space reaches an advanced civilization with no cultural framework for religion, and very little reason to treat his words as metaphor.
The Gospel According to Greg is an irreverent, theologically literate first-contact satire about faith, certainty, interpretation, and consequences on a civilizational scale. It is affectionate toward belief, merciless about human institutions, and deeply suspicious of anyone who claims to possess the only possible reading.
The Orchard
FULL DRAFT · 71,000 WORDS
A generation ship carries a human society across 532 years toward a world called Camelot. No institution survives five centuries unchanged: instructions become traditions, partial truths become ideologies, and practical compromises become sacred inheritance.
The Orchard is a darkly comic, multigenerational novel about institutional memory, civilizational drift, inherited missions, and what happens when descendants finally reach a future designed by the dead.
For literary representation, rights, or publishing inquiries, contact William.
More systems. More trouble.
Additional projects include a chemistry-driven pharmaceutical thriller about the hidden physical fragility of modern medicine; a post-apocalyptic road war novel about movement, scarcity, and the systems that replace law; and stories of alien civilizations shaped by unfamiliar biology, cognition, language, belief, and competing forms of power.
More speculative systems, and more human trouble, are on the way.
About
William T. Barker, PhD
Will Barker is a scientist, independent advisor, technical builder, and science fiction author. He founded SignalForge Advisors to help life sciences organizations turn complex evidence into better decisions. His fiction explores technology, institutions, belief, and the human consequences of systems that work exactly as designed.
He earned a PhD in Chemistry from the University of Notre Dame and a BS in Chemistry from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Education
University of Notre Dame
PhD, Chemistry · 2020
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
BS, Chemistry · 2013
Previous Experience
CSL Seqirus
Scientist, Virology
Agile Sciences
Drug discovery microbiology and antibiotic resistance research
Beyond the work
Based in North Carolina, William is a sitting member of the Advisory Board of The Rams Club and is involved in the UNC community. He also maintains an enthusiast's interest in cars, engineering, and the stories machines tell about the people who build them.
Contact
Start with the difficult question.
For consulting, scientific collaboration, literary representation, publishing, speaking, or media inquiries, reach out through LinkedIn or by email and I will respond as soon as practical.