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I'd echo sister posts re: how to get involved. My wife is currently in biotech doing mixed research/slightly CS-ey work and it constantly boggles my mind how a

I'd echo sister posts re: how to get involved. My wife is currently in biotech doing mixed research/slightly CS-ey work and it constantly boggles my mind how antique many of their methods are, but they barely have money to keep running let alone pay for the expertise and/or infrastructure to leverage modern computing. Companies that have more freedom tend to be more restrictive I've found, and without a PHD it can be hard to get a foot in the door. Been doing data engineer/distributed systems/full stack engineer for almost a decade now and the recurring feeling of "I should be doing more to contribute to humanity" is often followed by contemplation of pursuing bio, but frankly I've been in such a different part of industry I don't even know where to start without heavily hamstringing my current career (e.g. going back for a PHD, potentially in another field)

escot 10y ago
Yes there's tons of low hanging fruit, you just have to get your foot in the door somewhere to get eyes on them. A lot of biology is fairly rudimentary processes. It's like baking a cake. Much of medicinal chemistry is just exploring a space of molecules and screening them to find one that does X. And of course software is very good at modeling simple processes. As I mentioned in another comment, I actively decided to seek out a company in the space to join. I didn't know anyone really in bio before that. Another option is to get involved with an academic lab that is trying to bring software into their work (and there are many). Below are some interesting folks /projects merging bio and code (disclosure: I work for Transcriptic): Using nothing but code to engineer proteins. blog.booleanbiotech.com/genetic_engineering_pipeline_python.html Autoprotocol -- JSON specification for defining biological protocols autoprotocol.org Using visual programming to describe bio protocols http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/10/14/081075 http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/10/14/081075 Engineering bacteria with code and automation. www.zymergen.com

escot 10y ago

Yes there's tons of low hanging fruit, you just have to get your foot in the door somewhere to get eyes on them. A lot of biology is fairly rudimentary processes. It's like baking a cake. Much of medicinal chemistry is just exploring a space of molecules and screening them to find one that does X. And of course software is very good at modeling simple processes. As I mentioned in another comment, I actively decided to seek out a company in the space to join. I didn't know anyone really in bio before that. Another option is to get involved with an academic lab that is trying to bring software into their work (and there are many). Below are some interesting folks /projects merging bio and code (disclosure: I work for Transcriptic): Using nothing but code to engineer proteins. blog.booleanbiotech.com/genetic_engineering_pipeline_python.html Autoprotocol -- JSON specification for defining biological protocols autoprotocol.org Using visual programming to describe bio protocols http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/10/14/081075 http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/10/14/081075 Engineering bacteria with code and automation. www.zymergen.com