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This is completely unrelated, but do you guys have plans for summer internships / co-ops? There are a bunch of really interesting biotech companies with 1year i

by aroch 11y ago

This is completely unrelated, but do you guys have plans for summer internships / co-ops? There are a bunch of really interesting biotech companies with 1year internships but most don't have short-term

danieltillett 11y ago
As someone who runs a biotech company the reason why is in biotech it takes a long time to get a intern up to speed - biology is just so messy that you have to learn an awful lot of background information just to get to step one.
- aroch 11y ago
  I get that (I've experienced the pain of bringing new people up to speed in a lab), but it seems like this some of this could be solved by moving the selection process to earlier (e.g. January) and then having the background knowledge learned with checkins throughout before starting. It is just a shame that, in my current position as a wetlab researcher getting a computational Master's degree, finding internships that appeal to both sides is quite difficult. And I'm somewhat turned off by a lot of the computational summer internships because they basically don't expect anything out of you because your work isn't worth using once you've left -- they're offering internships because the government told them they had to if they wanted to keep their funding. Tangentially related, I used to work with a bunch of IDT's scientists. Their large oligo synthesis process, at least of as a few years ago, was kind of disappointing.
  - danieltillett 11y ago
    In theory it would be possible to do this, the major problem is not letting the pre-interns flailing around as they don’t really know where to start. The pre-intern also has to be really motivated. On this topic when I used to be an academic I used to try and get my honours students (4th year research students) and PhD students to start early learning all the background material a few months out of their official start date so they would hit the ground running. Not a single student ever managed to make any progress (most did absolutely nothing) despite having the entire summer to get up to speed.

by aroch 11y ago

danieltillett 11y ago

As someone who runs a biotech company the reason why is in biotech it takes a long time to get a intern up to speed - biology is just so messy that you have to learn an awful lot of background information just to get to step one.

aroch 11y ago
I get that (I've experienced the pain of bringing new people up to speed in a lab), but it seems like this some of this could be solved by moving the selection process to earlier (e.g. January) and then having the background knowledge learned with checkins throughout before starting. It is just a shame that, in my current position as a wetlab researcher getting a computational Master's degree, finding internships that appeal to both sides is quite difficult. And I'm somewhat turned off by a lot of the computational summer internships because they basically don't expect anything out of you because your work isn't worth using once you've left -- they're offering internships because the government told them they had to if they wanted to keep their funding. Tangentially related, I used to work with a bunch of IDT's scientists. Their large oligo synthesis process, at least of as a few years ago, was kind of disappointing.
- danieltillett 11y ago
  In theory it would be possible to do this, the major problem is not letting the pre-interns flailing around as they don’t really know where to start. The pre-intern also has to be really motivated. On this topic when I used to be an academic I used to try and get my honours students (4th year research students) and PhD students to start early learning all the background material a few months out of their official start date so they would hit the ground running. Not a single student ever managed to make any progress (most did absolutely nothing) despite having the entire summer to get up to speed.