Some suggestions: Help build better tools for researchers. * Julia (julialang.org) is very promising and could use talented developers to help build the ecosys

Some suggestions: Help build better tools for researchers. * Julia (julialang.org) is very promising and could use talented developers to help build the ecosystem. * Numba (http://numba.pydata.org/ http://numba.pydata.org/) looks amazing and should build on the existing strength of SciPy. Contribute to open-source projects related to medical research; a few favorites in the imaging space: * PLUS (https://www.assembla.com/spaces/plus/wiki https://www.assembla.com/spaces/plus/wiki) * OpenIGTLink (http://openigtlink.org http://openigtlink.org) * XTK (http://goxtk.org http://goxtk.org) * NiPy (http://nipy.sourceforge.net/nipy/ http://nipy.sourceforge.net/nipy/) Contributing to an open-source project would give exposure to the problem space while leveraging existing skills and not taking a huge initial risk (school or paycut). If you wanted to make this a full-time pursuit, such contribution could be leveraged: many labs would love to hire a talented programmer. However, expect a ~30-50% haircut (in hospital or university labs you will have a hard time cracking $50k to start and $70k on the high end). I am familiar with open-source projects in a number of other medically-relevant research areas. If you are interested in some specific area, shoot me an email and I'll see what I can think of.