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

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

#31

Post by indigoviolet »

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…

That's a very poor representation of bioinformatics. There's certainly a lot of data munging and cleaning (like in any field with lots of data), but bioinformatics/computational biology is not about dumb pattern matching or just writing code. Biologists can code just fine (I got a job at Facebook off a PhD in computational biology).

It's all about data mining and machine learning on biological data, to gain real insight about the functioning of an organism, often then doing the experiments to test that insight. I've seen lots of computer scientists and programmers jump in and flounder, because they're under the misconception that all it takes is the application of canned algorithms to a new data set. You need to understand biology (genomics, molecular biology, genetics, structural biology), first and foremost. Then you need to understand a significant amount of statistics, information theory, and computer science.

This isn't meant to discourage you, but you're not going to get far beyond doing more web programming for biology websites if you don't teach yourself some of these areas.

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

#36

Post by mitalia »

There are definitely opportunities for someone with your skills to ease into bioinformatics. Having conducted a job search not long ago, they are unfortunately a bit hard to find at times, depending on where you're located. In general, I think you'd have good luck starting with some of the less science-heavy bioinformatics work. For example, I'm at The Center for Biomedical Informatics in The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia Research Institute. Our group spends a lot of time meeting with researchers, understanding what they need, and building (or buying) systems that solve some of those problems. The team I am part of is much more focused on biomedical informatics than pure bioinformatics (though we have people who do "pure" bioinformatics as well). Our setup really makes things interesting. Many of the "big questions" in bioinformatics are real tough problems to crack (such as protein folding). But there is practically an unlimited need for people to have many smaller problems solved (with great impact). Simple things like integrating research data into a database-backed web-app can give a clinician the tools he or she needs to conduct their research more efficiently and uncover new hypotheses. Plus, we get to work on things that directly impact the health of kids. Many times, we're working directly with a physician who is conducting research into a particular disease. They literally will be seeing kids early in the day, and having a meeting with us about UI design later in the day.

We are actually hiring for two positions right now:

Senior Data Integration Analyst: http://www.chop.edu.apply2jobs.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=mExt...

Analyst/Programmer http://www.chop.edu.apply2jobs.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=mExt...

We're always looking for the right kind of people and I maintain that hacker news readers are a good pool to draw from. Don't let the corporate sound of those descriptions fool you, we're a pretty entrepreneurial group. If by any chance you're within easy travel distance from Philly, or even if you just want to chat more about bioinformatics, feel free to email me at italiam [at] email.chop.edu.

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

#37

Post by ben1040 »

Another possible angle is high performance computing as it relates to biological data.

Today's DNA sequencing instruments can kick out tens of millions of data points. These can be mapped back to where they belong on a genome and then from that data, variations can be calculated. Want to find out what mutations a cancer patient might have? This is how.

This would be a perfect place for someone who might be interested in cloud computing, for example.

I work in the field myself, and on my team there is a mix of pure CS people and computational biologists. In my experience there are plenty of opportunities for good developers to get in the door and make huge contributions without necessarily having to have all the comp bio experience.

And, for what it's worth, data visualization is always a problem and the field will always need sharp web guys to develop good tools to view what's going on. This gets especially important now that the volume of data that you're trying to get answers out of is so ridiculously huge.

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

#39

Post by fkirigin »

Depending on the project, there is a good deal of statistics, as well as biology knowledge.

As far as getting involved, I would check out current literature in the general area of "Bioinformatics". Also consider searching for publications in Systems Biology, Computational Biology, Functional Genomics. Usually there are good articles coming out of Genome Biology, BMC Bioinformatics, BMC Genomics, as well as Nature, Cell, etc.

I recently began a position as a Bioinformatics Software Engineer, after spending 8 years on Wall St building trading and financial analysis applications, which was somewhat of a switch (though my bachelor's is in Chemistry). Spending time reading the current literature has helped me get involved/engaged.

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

#40

Post by abyssknight »

khafra wrote: post #6
abyssknight wrote: post #5

I have a friend who is doing his master's thesis in Bioinformatics. If you like running batch jobs that can run days and fail in the middle, then its a great discipline for you! All kidding aside, the local University might be a good place to start. Often working as a grad student you can learn the books as well as get practical knowledge when working with a mentor. If you're near Orlando, FL I can get you in touch w…

I keep finding interesting things out about central florida--does Tampa Bay have anything interesting in that area?

I'm not familiar with USF's program. You might be able to contact their people and see though.
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