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So you're working in bio but yearning for IT? I'm almost the opposite. IT pays the bills, but I wish I was in evolutionary biology.

teekert 5y ago
Evolutionary biology as a profession is probably difficult to be a bill payer, it's afaik exclusively an academic exercise. Sure they need IT people (for bioinformatics, genome informatics, data science, etc) but you are almost 100% certain to be entering the academic "rat race". Which can be nice, if you're into it. You could make a start by offering your IT skills to an evolutionary biology professor? Why not invite yourself for a coffee? Biology is IT-ifying at a very rapid pace (I sequenced 200 basepairs in one experiment in 2003, last week we did 120.000.000.000 on our midrange NG sequencer, the human brain is pretty useless in dealing with that raw data.) Oncology has aspects of evolutionary biology, every tumor is in a mini evolutionary arms race with the host and its defenses, and Hospital Informatics is booming. It's an interoperability mess, they are struggling to "unlock their own data", let alone collaborate effectively. People with the right skills and fitting interests (like evolutionary biology) are really needed. But target the research side of things, or you end up what we sometimes call a "data plumber", you're just struggling to bring data from many legacy systems together when the professor or MD/PhD student asks for it... I heard from Data Scientists that are lured in and realize they are employed as Data Engineers. Which can be nice, if you're into it. But it's far away from biology. You could also go for healthcare companies like Illumina, Roche, Sophia Genetics, Philips, Siemens, etc. They all have hospitals as customers. Anyway, I guess once you in the right environment you can start to move in small steps towards preferred positions, say you start as a data engineer but work your way up the IT chain and soon you're talking to Oncology professionals trying to understand their problems. But give yourself 5-10 years I'd say, it's not something you can do fast, you have to prove yourself at every little step.
- Grustaf 5y ago
  Thanks for the thoughtful response! But I'm actually not interested in the computational side of biology, it might be a way in but I really don't find IT interesting, it just happen to be very lucrative, so as soon as I can I want to escape. Academia is where I want to end up actually, planning to pivot when I can afford it. Not too far off now!
  - teekert 5y ago
    Cool, biology is a very nice field to be in, good luck! Beware of the "guy that can fix the printer"-label (happened to me), just play dumb, don't let them know you're good with computers ;)
ofrancon 5y ago
These domains are not mutually exclusive. Have a look at evolutionary algorithms.
- Grustaf 5y ago
  The thing is I DON'T want to do anything related to computers, it's just a good way to make money.

teekert 5y ago

Evolutionary biology as a profession is probably difficult to be a bill payer, it's afaik exclusively an academic exercise. Sure they need IT people (for bioinformatics, genome informatics, data science, etc) but you are almost 100% certain to be entering the academic "rat race". Which can be nice, if you're into it. You could make a start by offering your IT skills to an evolutionary biology professor? Why not invite yourself for a coffee? Biology is IT-ifying at a very rapid pace (I sequenced 200 basepairs in one experiment in 2003, last week we did 120.000.000.000 on our midrange NG sequencer, the human brain is pretty useless in dealing with that raw data.) Oncology has aspects of evolutionary biology, every tumor is in a mini evolutionary arms race with the host and its defenses, and Hospital Informatics is booming. It's an interoperability mess, they are struggling to "unlock their own data", let alone collaborate effectively. People with the right skills and fitting interests (like evolutionary biology) are really needed. But target the research side of things, or you end up what we sometimes call a "data plumber", you're just struggling to bring data from many legacy systems together when the professor or MD/PhD student asks for it... I heard from Data Scientists that are lured in and realize they are employed as Data Engineers. Which can be nice, if you're into it. But it's far away from biology. You could also go for healthcare companies like Illumina, Roche, Sophia Genetics, Philips, Siemens, etc. They all have hospitals as customers. Anyway, I guess once you in the right environment you can start to move in small steps towards preferred positions, say you start as a data engineer but work your way up the IT chain and soon you're talking to Oncology professionals trying to understand their problems. But give yourself 5-10 years I'd say, it's not something you can do fast, you have to prove yourself at every little step.

Grustaf 5y ago
Thanks for the thoughtful response! But I'm actually not interested in the computational side of biology, it might be a way in but I really don't find IT interesting, it just happen to be very lucrative, so as soon as I can I want to escape. Academia is where I want to end up actually, planning to pivot when I can afford it. Not too far off now!
- teekert 5y ago
  Cool, biology is a very nice field to be in, good luck! Beware of the "guy that can fix the printer"-label (happened to me), just play dumb, don't let them know you're good with computers ;)

ofrancon 5y ago

These domains are not mutually exclusive. Have a look at evolutionary algorithms.

Grustaf 5y ago
The thing is I DON'T want to do anything related to computers, it's just a good way to make money.