4 ms·

You can work on academic projects funded by public money. The results are open source. Ours, in bioinformatics: http://intermine.org http://intermine.org

luckluckgoosed 13y ago
The results can be open source, but do not have to be, even if funded by public money. For example, d3.js is open source, but the code for PageRank and its related search engine is not. When I was a grad students, I worked on projects funded by NSF and DARPA where the code and data were not released. So it totally depends. Some professors and grad students care more about releasing software into the public, while others don't care or don't bother writing reliable code.
nickthemagicman 13y ago
Just curious how would one go about getting involved in something like this? I'm looking for a topic for a masters thesis/possible job?
- agilebyte 13y ago
  If you have a topic, then email (not shotgun) a PI. If not, then take up a masters course and do a project with a group in the field of your choice. In UK, most academic posts will also be on job sites like this one http://www.jobs.ac.uk/ http://www.jobs.ac.uk/. You can see our job ad from when we were hiring a JS person here: https://github.com/intermine/intermine.org/blob/master/docs/about/jobs.rst https://github.com/intermine/intermine.org/blob/master/docs/...
kim_rutherford 13y ago
I definitely recommend scientific programming as a career. I've worked as a programmer on bioinformatics projects in academia for the last 15 years. Everything has been open source. Academia doesn't pay as well as the Real World but there are many benefits. As well as being able to work on open source software, the work is usually interesting. Job security has been excellent and I've moved jobs when I've wanted to (5 jobs in 15 years). Everywhere I've worked has had plenty of vacation days, sick days and a good pension plan. The most useful benefit to me at the moment is flexibility: I mostly work remotely and I choose my hours. Many bioinformatics jobs don't require prior experience of the field. I started with a computer science degree and no knowledge of biology and learnt the rest on the job.
- agilebyte 13y ago
  Hi Kim!

luckluckgoosed 13y ago

The results can be open source, but do not have to be, even if funded by public money. For example, d3.js is open source, but the code for PageRank and its related search engine is not. When I was a grad students, I worked on projects funded by NSF and DARPA where the code and data were not released. So it totally depends. Some professors and grad students care more about releasing software into the public, while others don't care or don't bother writing reliable code.

nickthemagicman 13y ago

Just curious how would one go about getting involved in something like this? I'm looking for a topic for a masters thesis/possible job?

agilebyte 13y ago
If you have a topic, then email (not shotgun) a PI. If not, then take up a masters course and do a project with a group in the field of your choice. In UK, most academic posts will also be on job sites like this one http://www.jobs.ac.uk/ http://www.jobs.ac.uk/. You can see our job ad from when we were hiring a JS person here: https://github.com/intermine/intermine.org/blob/master/docs/about/jobs.rst https://github.com/intermine/intermine.org/blob/master/docs/...

kim_rutherford 13y ago

I definitely recommend scientific programming as a career. I've worked as a programmer on bioinformatics projects in academia for the last 15 years. Everything has been open source. Academia doesn't pay as well as the Real World but there are many benefits. As well as being able to work on open source software, the work is usually interesting. Job security has been excellent and I've moved jobs when I've wanted to (5 jobs in 15 years). Everywhere I've worked has had plenty of vacation days, sick days and a good pension plan. The most useful benefit to me at the moment is flexibility: I mostly work remotely and I choose my hours. Many bioinformatics jobs don't require prior experience of the field. I started with a computer science degree and no knowledge of biology and learnt the rest on the job.

agilebyte 13y ago
Hi Kim!