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I work on a bioinformatics team in a research environment and have no bio coursework/background. There is a ton of standard IT work here. I do mainly data int
by tom_b 14y ago
I work on a bioinformatics team in a research environment and have no bio coursework/background. There is a ton of standard IT work here.
I do mainly data integration and standard reporting stuff. For example, reports for "where is my sample in the pipeline, has the fastq been generated, where are the variant call results?" But being interested in the bio/genetics stuff is a huge plus. Hackers in the space seem welcome and needed. You gotta fight the credential hierarchy some - you clearly don't matter as much as the MD/PhD, but sometimes they should listen to you, like when, say, it comes to the programming language choice you make for the app they will use. That said, I sneak in what I think is best for the task and if that means Ruby or Clojure instead of Java, results are what matters in the end.
- buss 14y agoI work at Counsyl, a pre-pregnancy genetic testing company, and I can confirm that there is a ton of work for people not versed in bio. Everything from assay & sequencing visualization tools to more traditional IT challenges like "How do we manage the huge amount of data coming off the seq machines?" -- which is terabytes per day. I don't have a bio background so I work on software tools and automation to support the rest of the company. Counsyl has huge respect for all levels of science and engineering, so you don't face a credential hierarchy everywhere (but Counsyl is probably unique in this area). We have a strong solve-problems-with-software culture that any dev would be comfortable with. If the gp is interested, check out https://www.counsyl.com/jobs/ https://www.counsyl.com/jobs/