Ask HN: Getting started in biology with a software background • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Getting started in biology with a software background

#31

Post by iongoatb » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 3:00 PM UTC

I'm curious who all these sarcastic bio "experts" are that are suggesting getting a PhD or hiring one. I'm a former bio major and researcher/scientist that transitioned to software engineering years ago. I've published papers in bio and worked with many PhDs. Many of them were idiots. Being a PhD doesn't mean anything, it's the independent work that you put in yourself (in an academic lab or by yourself) that determines how skilled you become.

If you have strong CS skills then you should:

1) Focus on bioinformatics. You will immediately be of use as far as making your own product/service or working for a startup if you apply your skills there. Most bio specialists are incredibly weak at data analysis and/or any type of computing. Pretty much all the important problems in bio are computational in nature. The "impressive" bio researchers/scientists have the data science skills of a sub-par / average data scientist / CS grad.

2) Create a home lab or find one / start one locally. Look up the odin project. Work on DIY genetic engineering and you can even take classes from that site. If you just get to this point and stop you will literally have more practical skill and knowledge than the vast majority of graduates with bio degrees.

3) Lots of biohackers experiment with themselves for clout/hype/attention. It never ends well. There are plenty of lab organisms that you can easily source and ethically experiment with.

4) Don't listen to anyone that tells you that you can't do something because you don't have a PhD. Those are the same type of people that missed out on the computing and internet revolutions because they were busy doing trivial academic work.

Re: Ask HN: Getting started in biology with a software background

#32

Post by bioinformatics » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 3:06 PM UTC

I would start with genetics and genomics, then add some protein knowledge and focus on the techniques that rely mostly on informatics/bioinformatics, like Next-Generation Sequencing, chromatography and similar.

Add some evolution and phylogenetic, which with a mathematical background should be straightforward to grasp.

Re: Ask HN: Getting started in biology with a software background

#33

Post by Ultimatt » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 3:07 PM UTC

tomp wrote: post #14

shpongled wrote: post #8

I'm in my 5th year of a chemical biology PhD and I'm looking to potentially move into computer science/data science (been programming for 15 years) after I graduate. Maybe we can just switch? I work with CRISPR for my project. In all seriousness, you are going to need a PhD if you want to truly understand all of the background of the field. Human biology/biochemistry is just about the most complex thing humans have e…

Can you explain your reasoning behind need a PhD ? It makes sense to me why you should learn a lot to understand a complex field, but I fail to see why you should also spend a few years researching a very narrow subfield... wouldn't it be better to be a generalist and be able to apply your knowledge widely, as opposed to only understanding a tiny sliver of the whole field?

Depends what sort of company you wish to produce. 23andMe you could definitely have done without a PhD as its much more traditional market fit "lets do logistics". But Illumina to produce the micro array in the first place or have the software to optimise probes etc. that takes a certain level of understanding have noticed or seen the value of that thing laying around in academia before it was mainstream. All the interesting new ideas/IP are sat within an academic network more than a company one at the moment so accessing that network is a big reason for a PhD.

Re: Ask HN: Getting started in biology with a software background

#34

Post by cryoshon » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 3:08 PM UTC

baron_harkonnen wrote: post #22

Right now I know a ridiculous amount of people with bio phds from top tier schools that are trying to make it as data scientists. I don't think there is a bio revolution like the software revolution that is happening quite yet. I know quite a few bio/chem people working in pharma as well. That industry is booming but mostly for the people that own pharmaceutical companies not their employees. There's a reason that mo…

>I know quite a few bio/chem people working in pharma as well. That industry is booming but mostly for the people that own pharmaceutical companies not their employees. There's a reason that most biologists from good school would rather be bad data scientist that good lab workers in pharma/bio tech. The pay is much worse and pharma/bio tech don't treat there employees nearly as well as big tech companies do.

yep, that's why i left the industry. the companies know that the science staff are willing to work for less, so long as they have the opportunity to do what they're interested in. so they end up working for much less.

Re: Ask HN: Getting started in biology with a software background

#35

Post by wiggles_md » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 3:10 PM UTC

tomp wrote: post #14

shpongled wrote: post #8

I'm in my 5th year of a chemical biology PhD and I'm looking to potentially move into computer science/data science (been programming for 15 years) after I graduate. Maybe we can just switch? I work with CRISPR for my project. In all seriousness, you are going to need a PhD if you want to truly understand all of the background of the field. Human biology/biochemistry is just about the most complex thing humans have e…

Can you explain your reasoning behind need a PhD ? It makes sense to me why you should learn a lot to understand a complex field, but I fail to see why you should also spend a few years researching a very narrow subfield... wouldn't it be better to be a generalist and be able to apply your knowledge widely, as opposed to only understanding a tiny sliver of the whole field?

You don’t need a PhD, but it helps.

If you want to have a decent shot at getting funding from biotech VCs, the team overall needs experience in biotech AND startups, and the less experience the founder has in biotech the more the team will require to compensate for the deficiency. And vice versa for business experience, a freshly minted PhD is going to need team members with significant biotech BD experience.

A PhD or MD counts towards experience in biotech. MS + years of industry experience also counts, as would BS + many years of industry experience.

A PhD is nice because because it demonstrates deep experience in a narrow field plus an understanding of context. The context part is key. Autodidacts tend to miss out on the context, and their learned knowledge tends to be more fragile as a result, so there is a slight bias towards advanced degrees.

Insufficient experience is a hard no for biotech. Nobody wants to see another Theranos, and notably biotech VCs didn’t put any money into Theranos. We’d like to keep it that way.

Re: Ask HN: Getting started in biology with a software background

#36

Post by Odenwaelder » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 3:10 PM UTC

iongoatb wrote: post #31

I'm curious who all these sarcastic bio "experts" are that are suggesting getting a PhD or hiring one. I'm a former bio major and researcher/scientist that transitioned to software engineering years ago. I've published papers in bio and worked with many PhDs. Many of them were idiots. Being a PhD doesn't mean anything, it's the independent work that you put in yourself (in an academic lab or by yourself) that determi…

1) Not enough for starting a biotech startup as OP would like to do. Having a PhD means that you've spent years on a certain subject. You cannot just read a book and be up to speed on biomedical research and CRISPR.

2) Having hands-on experience in wet labs is useful and relatively easy to learn. People can learn wet lab skills sufficient to carry out experiments (i.e. pipetting stuff together) in under a year. This is not what research is about though.

3) True

4) You don't need a PhD. But to truly succeed in biology, you need to learn things from the ground up, which takes years of studying. If you just read a few books, you will be able to understand certain parts of it, but as a founder of a biotech startup, you will be the equivalent of a tech startup founder blindly following buzzwords such as "blockchain".

Re: Ask HN: Getting started in biology with a software background

#37

Post by Ultimatt » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 3:15 PM UTC

tomp wrote: post #30

shpongled wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Presumably, this hypothetical biotech startup is going to be focused on some narrow niche of CRISPR technology, so being a specialist is exactly what's required in my mind. If the OP just wants to learn about CRISPR he could probably do a masters or even a year or two of self study. I find it very unlikely that they would be able to come up with something novel and marketable without even more hands on time.

But if PhD is basically learning followed by research, you could also just do a masters / learning followed by research at a company (directly relevant to what the company is doing)?

There is a lot of professional development during PhD too. Especially if you're at a well funded institution with enough prestige to have a lot of international collaboration. The resources are typically a lot more experimental and RnD focussed than you will find in many companies. Having done a masters I'd say the "learning" there is rote and the sort of thing you do in school. PhD what you learn is how to actually see through BS you otherwise took as "truth" on a masters, see the landscape of research at play, which ideas have merit, which don't, what's interesting and likely has large implications etc. The actual skills and exposure is something quite tricky to explain but unless you do research in a really big company, it might be a lot harder to develop those. Especially if you are an entry level technician, as most of the more senior positions are likely to be those with PhDs already. At least in biotech, software and hardware it's way more about industry career paths and RnD.

Re: Ask HN: Getting started in biology with a software background

#38

Post by cryoshon » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 3:16 PM UTC

my background is in biotech and i've worked at a small handful of biotech startups in a scientific capacity.

here's my advice: unless you have friends who can set you up with the right VCs and ensure that they will be willing to overlook your lack of experience and IP, don't bother.

you're not going to get up to speed working in the lab on your own in any short amount of time. learning the theoretical stuff that you need to know won't take long, but you probably won't understand how to use the theory to make something novel until you've spent time in the lab. and you won't know how to vet the ideas of people with phds, either.

then there's the elephant in the room: risk. biotech is extremely risky because drug development is difficult even under ideal conditions. making "niche drugs" is even more difficult than making drugs for the mainstream because niche diseases won't have as much of the scientific background already researched when you sit down to try to come up with a useful therapy concept.

if you want to talk in more depth about the skills which are actually needed to get into the field in a scientific or a business capacity, i've advised someone who reached out to me here on HN about that exact topic in the past, and i'm more than happy to discuss it with you via email. check out my profile if you're interested.

Re: Ask HN: Getting started in biology with a software background

#39

Post by exp1orer » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 3:23 PM UTC

iongoatb wrote: post #31

I'm curious who all these sarcastic bio "experts" are that are suggesting getting a PhD or hiring one. I'm a former bio major and researcher/scientist that transitioned to software engineering years ago. I've published papers in bio and worked with many PhDs. Many of them were idiots. Being a PhD doesn't mean anything, it's the independent work that you put in yourself (in an academic lab or by yourself) that determi…

Thanks! For others who tried to google "The Odin Project", the correct link is https://www.the-odin.com/ . It's confusing because that's also the name of a website for learning web development (https://www.theodinproject.com/).

Re: Ask HN: Getting started in biology with a software background

#40

Post by iongoatb » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 3:23 PM UTC

Odenwaelder wrote: post #36

iongoatb wrote: post #31

I'm curious who all these sarcastic bio "experts" are that are suggesting getting a PhD or hiring one. I'm a former bio major and researcher/scientist that transitioned to software engineering years ago. I've published papers in bio and worked with many PhDs. Many of them were idiots. Being a PhD doesn't mean anything, it's the independent work that you put in yourself (in an academic lab or by yourself) that determi…

1) Not enough for starting a biotech startup as OP would like to do. Having a PhD means that you've spent years on a certain subject. You cannot just read a book and be up to speed on biomedical research and CRISPR. 2) Having hands-on experience in wet labs is useful and relatively easy to learn. People can learn wet lab skills sufficient to carry out experiments (i.e. pipetting stuff together) in under a year. This…

Never recommended just "reading a book" - although books are for knowledge transfer. In fact, I recommended the exact opposite. Creating or joining a lab to do DIY genetic engineering is not pipetting. Anyone can easily obtain the materials to do CRISPR and implement various ideas they get from reading the latest research and literature. It is exactly analogous to the computer and internet revolution. All of those founders learned things from the ground up, often outside of academia, while others were completing academic research. The truth is that the same opportunity is now available to biotech and genetic engineering. The odin project, for example (I am not affiliated in any way whatsoever), offers all the materials to build your own home DIY bio engineering lab. That is certainly enough to do the required research and test / validate various research ideas, and ultimately creating a startup.