(source: doing research into this) For those with a computational/hacker background wanting to make a difference: There is actually a lot of opportunity in th

(source: doing research into this) For those with a computational/hacker background wanting to make a difference: There is actually a lot of opportunity in the Computational Biology/Drug Development/Genomics space, with the caveat that it is a very difficult field (especially for company creation). It's a lot easier for CS folks to build another no-SQL database than it is to build a ML framework for, say, cancer prediction, but the opportunity is there. A lot of folks in this space come from the bio side, and teach themselves programming. Very few folks come from the CS side, and partner with the biologists. As a result, there is a giant gap between what is possible for a computer scientist and what is currently being executed. The state of the art in this space will probably make you all very sad. I will pay $$ for engineers to work on this: I have a side project working with an academic lab to develop a new antibiotic to target drug resistant beta lactamase (the primary protein associated with drug resistance) using a relatively novel computational approach. Sadly I've been distracted by my primary job, but if you are interested let me know. I am based in SF.