How can a Web Developer get into Bioinformatics?
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.