Mika Martin Nieuwenhuyzen Surabaya → Perth

In person

The part of the CV that doesn't fit in a CV.

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Fig. 01 — The short version
Portrait placeholder
Mika Perth, WA

I grew up in Surabaya, Indonesia, and now live in Perth, where I did a Bachelor of Biomedicine and a Master of Bioinformatics at UWA.

Somewhere between the anatomy labs and the immunology lectures I worked out that I preferred the computer side of biology. The masters made it official: dissertation on gene body methylation in Arabidopsis, a Spotlight paper in Trends in Genetics, and a Distinction at the end of it.

These days I split my time between three things: building BioNodulo, volunteering in Nikolay Shirokikh's RNA lab at ACRTC, and evaluating AI coding agents, reading their output and marking where they go wrong. In February 2027 I start my PhD on making bioinformatics pipelines catch their own mistakes.

Outside of work: karate (I was ranked ninth internationally, a while ago), comics and anime, training small AI models for fun, and a dog who has never once reviewed my code.

Fig. 02 — Field notes self-reported
Favourite organism
Homo superior, Marvel’s mutants
Hidden talent
Ranked #9 in karate, internationally
If science never happened
Comic creator / novelist
Spirit animal
Owl
Drink
Monster Energy, the white one
Food
Korean fried chicken
Novel
The Sandman, Neil Gaiman
Coffee dependency
5/5, second cup first
Bench vs computation
95/100, the keyboard wins
Indoors vs outdoors
0/100. Fully indoors.
Fig. 03 — On paper

Education

2024–25Master of BioinformaticsUWA. Distinction, GPA 6.36/7. Global Excellence Scholarship.
2020–24Bachelor of BiomedicineUWA. Double major: Anatomy & Immunology. Global Excellence Scholarship.
2018–20IB DiplomaCita Hati Christian Senior School. Academic Excellence Award.

Languages

English Indonesian French Javanese Chinese

Work

2026–MercorAI Generalist Expert
2026–Biocodecs group, ACRTCResearch volunteer, Shirokikh lab
2026–IDP EducationIELTS exam invigilator
2025–26AlignerrAgentic AI code reviewer, then AI systems evaluator
2025UWA AI ClubFounding committee member
2025Melville CaresStorytelling intern. Made a short documentary with local seniors; screened it at a community premiere the Mayor attended. Nominated for Outstanding Intern.
2022–24PT. Power Plant ServicesTranslator, English–Indonesian. Earlier: data analyst, Excel and VBA.
2014–16Shotokan Karate-do InternationalAssistant coach, Surabaya
Research Back to the science ↗