This article is timely for me, having recently started a new job in bioinformatics. Specifically, building a centralized database (warehouse) for a variety of

This article is timely for me, having recently started a new job in bioinformatics. Specifically, building a centralized database (warehouse) for a variety of cancer research study data. I'm coming from the opposite direction - a computer science background to the biology. A huge challenge for me is rapidly learning enough of the biostats and process to understand how to allow researchers to leverage having all this data in one place, easily accessible, and with a front-end that makes "sense" to the those MD/PhD types. A starting point is understanding what type of questions researchers can ask now that they have all the different data in one spot. Fred Brooks said something like "computer scientists are toolsmiths." We build tools for user needs that simplify and strengthen the user's work. This requires the ability to somehow understand the user's needs, communicate with them effectively, and implement usable tools for them. I sometimes feel like it is a failure on our part as builders to make it necessary for people who need software tools to build their own. I'm more than happy for other fields to add more CS type education to their required courses, but I'd rather be able to give researchers tools so that they stay on their critical path, rather than having to learn enough to hack together their own full solution.