Shane Neeley traces his job as a data scientist with a Houston-based clinical informatics company back to his pet guinea pig named Pig.
When Pig died in 1999, Neeley wanted to memorialize his friend, so he did what any tech-minded millennial would do: he taught himself HTML and dedicated a web page to Pig.
“I was already interested in animals. I watched Animal Planet and Steve Irwin. I went to the library and read nonfiction books about animals, and I followed what Jane Goodall and Diane Fossey were doing. Then I took that next step into computers,” said Neeley, who earned his professional master’s degree in bioengineering (BIOE) from Rice in 2014. His studies focused on systems biology programming.
For more than seven years, Neeley has worked for MolecularMatch Inc., a clinical informatics SaaS (software as a service) company founded in 2014 out of MD Anderson Cancer Center. The company uses tumor molecular profiling from previous patients to create personalized treatments for current patients.
Neeley was born and raised in Portland, Ore. His mother is a retired nurse. His father started out as a drummer, first in a rock band called China Watch, then in a zydeco band called the New Iberians. Now he owns a company that installs audio-video systems. Thanks to them and other relatives who were teachers, Neeley was encouraged to follow academic pursuits.
He earned his B.A. in molecular, cellular and developmental biology from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 2010, and for the next three years worked as a research assistant at the Oregon Health and Science University in Portland.
“After a while I figured I was tired of doing tedious stuff in Excel and dissecting animals. I knew I wanted something else,” said Neeley, and that’s when he decided to earn a master’s degree and go to Rice. “I had a shift in perspective, a new professionalism.”
At Rice he enjoyed the abundant networking opportunities, especially with people associated with the nearby Texas Medical Center. While working on his professional master’s degree, Neeley worked as a programmer for Nano3D Biosciences in Houston. He met someone from MolecularMatch, which led to his job there as software engineer and, after three years, data scientist. Now he works remotely from Portland.
Asked if he had advice for Rice students, Neeley said, “Network. Find people you hit it off with. For me, the people who were friends became colleagues and I’m appreciative of them to this day. I’m thankful for all the people I’ve met who taught me what hard work really is.”
Neeley has recently written and self-published a book, Stone Age Code: From Monkey Business to AI, partly written with his AI collaborator.
“Rice turned me from a biologist into a bioengineer and entrepreneur,” Neeley said. “I gained an education and a network of people who led me to the data scientist position I’ve now had for seven years.”