Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: How can a Web Developer get into Bioinformatics?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 41 posts

Re: Ask HN: How can a Web Developer get into Bioinformatics?

#21

Post by blaser »

bioweek wrote: post #12
kapauldo wrote: post #8

do a search of recently awarded government grants on bioinformatics, particularly small business grants (SBIR). awards are all public, so you should have no problem finding them. contact those folks and just tell them honestly what you are interested in doing (be sure to read their awards first so you have some idea what work they're doing). everyone respects people who are trying to learn new skills, and i think you…

That sounds like a good idea. I'll give that a try.

The results of a search like that would make a great post. Please share what you find.

Re: Ask HN: How can a Web Developer get into Bioinformatics?

#22

Post by Mz »

Pick up a copy of "What color is your parachute?" Read up on the advice on informational interviews. Do your best to find some contacts in this field and see if they will agree to an informational interview. (Rule #1: You are NOT networking at this point. There can be no intent to finagle a job this way.)

Someone higher up than me at my company (not a bioinformatics thing) told me that I might qualify for some positions that it doesn't look like I would because I have a strong-ish math background and they basically look for that and do the other training in house because they simply can't find people who already do what they need done. So you might find that some jobs in bio-informatics follow a similar pattern. This information is unlikely to be public knowledge or advertised openly in job descriptions. You will need the inside scoop and that's where an informational interview would come in very handy.

Good luck with this.

Re: Ask HN: How can a Web Developer get into Bioinformatics?

#23

Post by caffeine »

If you're contacting people about this (and you should), try to do some reading beforehand. In particular this bit:

I've always wanted to work with new biological technologies, for example figuring out what genes do, or how proteins fold, or anything cool like that where I can increase the world's knowledge.

What about Bioinformatics interests you? More specifically: exactly what part of the world's knowledge would you like to increase and why?

I think a good, detailed answer to that question (and decent coding skills) is the most useful thing for you right now.

Maybe this is useful?

http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Electrical-Engineering-and-Compute...

And here are links to courses (and therefore course notes) at Stanford:

http://www-helix.stanford.edu/people/altman/bioinformatics.h...

Re: Ask HN: How can a Web Developer get into Bioinformatics?

#24

Post by tom »

What you're describing is the life I left to start my latest co. I worked at a big research university having not had bio since college .. years ago. The key is to find ways you can help, find someone who needs what you have to offer, and work like crazy to get them to like you. Not that I did this, I kinda fell into it, but I watched others do it with much success. That said, as others have mentioned, statistics, statistics, and then when you need break, some more statistics. Learn Python and bioPython, learn NCBI Blast, and WU BLAST inside and out (read the papers), know some bio basics, and prepare to take a pay cut.

Also, if you find a group you're interested in, who's work you like and can get to interview, or at least a meeting / talk with anyone, read every paper to come out of their lab since the dawn of time. These papers can be hard to grok, and down right painful to read. Read them, and read them again. Show interest in their work and they will like you. It's ok to not get it all. It's ok, to not truly understand what they're trying to do. Trust me, some reviewers don't seem to read the entire papers either ...

If you have any further q's, you can derive my email quite easily from my profile. Ping me. Also, where do you live? If you're in the Boston area, we can talk in person. I know a LOT of people in this space and we were always looking for great software engineers who had a thirst for biology.

Re: Ask HN: How can a Web Developer get into Bioinformatics?

#25

Post by tom »

kapauldo wrote: post #8

do a search of recently awarded government grants on bioinformatics, particularly small business grants (SBIR). awards are all public, so you should have no problem finding them. contact those folks and just tell them honestly what you are interested in doing (be sure to read their awards first so you have some idea what work they're doing). everyone respects people who are trying to learn new skills, and i think you…

Do you know how many of these have been awarded in the last six months - especially with the stimulus package? Seriously, this is intractable. Find folks who are doing work that interests you, and then try and find their grants and their papers.

Re: Ask HN: How can a Web Developer get into Bioinformatics?

#26

Post by gintas »

Bioinformatics is cool, but it's basically less sexy than you might think. There are various directions to work on, but the kind of work is essentially statistics and pattern matching. If you want to figure out what genes do or how proteins fold in general, go read a textbook. Spending a year on a single gene processing gigabytes of dirty data may not be as sexy as you might think. Or it might be if that's your cup of tea, but as I said, in the end, it's mostly statistics.

Re: Ask HN: How can a Web Developer get into Bioinformatics?

#27

Post by jergason »

I am in an undergraduate-level bioinformatics course right now, and can echo what was said about statistics. The biology isn't too tough to pick up, but I am weak in stats and that is my greatest difficulty with this class. That said, I am enjoying it immensely. The book we use is a good overview of the subject - http://www.amazon.com/Bioinformatics-Molecular-Evolution-Pau... -Bioinformatics and Molecular Evolution. Most of the tools that bioinformaticians use are buggy, horribly designed and very unfriendly to the average user. One way to get involved is just improving the usability and stability of the tools. There are plenty of command line tools that you can add a GUI to if that is your thing:

http://bio-bwa.sourceforge.net/

http://abacus.gene.ucl.ac.uk/software/paml.html

http://samtools.sourceforge.net/

You don't need to know too much to contribute. If you are in Utah and interested I could get you some contacts with professors.

Re: Ask HN: How can a Web Developer get into Bioinformatics?

#28

Post by dlnovell »

Mz wrote: post #22

Pick up a copy of "What color is your parachute?" Read up on the advice on informational interviews. Do your best to find some contacts in this field and see if they will agree to an informational interview. (Rule #1: You are NOT networking at this point. There can be no intent to finagle a job this way.) Someone higher up than me at my company (not a bioinformatics thing) told me that I might qualify for some positi…

That book is absolutely amazing. It's almost a secret weapon for finding work in that it's completely indirect. If you talk to enough people who do the kind of work you want to do, eventually someone will see potential in you and not necessarily offer you a job, but KNOW someone that might. Just talk to everyone that's willing to give you the time, be honest and enthusiastic about what you want to do (and having enough background knowledge to sound competent sure helps), and eventually you'll make the right contact. It's almost certainly not going to be a quick process, but it's an incredibly powerful one.

Re: Ask HN: How can a Web Developer get into Bioinformatics?

#29

Post by roundsquare »

tom wrote: post #25
kapauldo wrote: post #8

do a search of recently awarded government grants on bioinformatics, particularly small business grants (SBIR). awards are all public, so you should have no problem finding them. contact those folks and just tell them honestly what you are interested in doing (be sure to read their awards first so you have some idea what work they're doing). everyone respects people who are trying to learn new skills, and i think you…

Do you know how many of these have been awarded in the last six months - especially with the stimulus package? Seriously, this is intractable. Find folks who are doing work that interests you, and then try and find their grants and their papers.

Depends. If he can narrow down the search by finding a specific area of the field he wants to go into it might be more tractable.

Re: Ask HN: How can a Web Developer get into Bioinformatics?

#30

Post by bonecandy »

gintas wrote: post #26

Bioinformatics is cool, but it's basically less sexy than you might think. There are various directions to work on, but the kind of work is essentially statistics and pattern matching. If you want to figure out what genes do or how proteins fold in general, go read a textbook. Spending a year on a single gene processing gigabytes of dirty data may not be as sexy as you might think. Or it might be if that's your cup o…

Interesting. Pattern matching, eh? I'm pretty good with regular expressions... sign me up!

:)

Post reply on HN