Forum:Bioinformatic jobs outside academia?

Question

[mxs]

Hi there,

I hope this is the right place to post my question. I am a bioinformatician, well the one who has been doing hc bioinformatics for a while now in areas like NGS (developing short read aligners), different shell emulators, various software tools for biology groups, system administration and so on.. I am a skilled c,c++,perl,javascript,r and sql programmer (no certificates) and I have been doing this for 12 years now but somehow everything I do in academia is extremely important for the group or the institution but not important enough to be published or even to get my name as a coauthor on a paper. Even when I try to publish stuff on my own there were always some loopholes, problems, something which ultimately stopped the publication process. So my publication record is quite bad (virtually 0). Unfortunately due to my age I cannot stick around at the level at which I am any more and I cannot go up due to my publication record. So I concluded: life in academia is over for me. Therefore, I am interested to move to industry if possible, but which one and how? Who else needs a bioinformatician aside from pharma or biotec industry. Also I realize I will have to start form zero again but when I consider the alternative, starting from nothing it's not that bad I guess. So where can a bioinformatician with a PhD in Biology look for a job outside academia?

[mikhail.shugay]

Just wanted to note that while publication record matters much, there are other ways to improve your CV. I would recommend putting all your code at github and spending some time to make a documentation for it. In some IT jobs a good github account is more than enough to demonstrate your skills.

[Devon Ryan]

What country are you in? That plays a big role in your options.

[YOT]

Hi mxs, I think this is a good question. As you got, basically we have two main kind of jobs in bioinformatics. 1-Academy, means, research field. 2-Private company. Back 1 year ago, I was making a research inside academy in Canada, and I interviewed some researchers. My question was basically "When you researchers, are developing a financial planning for a project, do you have a specific amount of money, to pay bioinformatics tasks, that you will need?". The answer was, no. Here in Canada, the bioinformatics tasks is a exchange. That means, the bioinformatician will do his job for a little amount of money during 2 or 3 years and at the end will receive a paper - Master degree. The works go on. Now you will receive a new tittle, doctor, then PhD or higher. At the end you will have no enough money, your cv will be powered, and you will have your name in some good publication. The second way is to work in pharmaceutical companies. There they will need you to "create money". There you will have a good salary, based on your project or future drugs you will work on. To be able to work there you must hold at minimal level, doctorate. You can works like a consultant too.

Answer 1

[Brett]

There are a number of options open to you.

Speaking as a biologist (PhD) working in industry as a Bioinformatican I would recommend marketing yourself as someone that bridges the two disciplines. You recognise the limitations of both biology and IT, and can translate between the two groups. This is your biggest strength, because you can help companies be more efficient, and bring a different perspective to problems.

Most places in the world industry cant get bioinformaticians. I know companies that have been looking well over a year to find someone suitable. Whilst there are your typical names (Phizer, Bayer, Johnson and Johnson) There are an increasing number of relatively new players investing significant amounts trying to attract new talent. Dow Agro and INVISTA are putting together new bioinformatics teams, Sabic, Heineken, Coke are all looking to use/expand their Bioinformatics. Even Google are trying to attract bioinformaticians at the moment.

You can earn some very good wages in these companies, as your skills are rare. I would not worry too much about papers, as bioinformaticians are often viewed those that provide support.

The reason there is a shortage (besides cross disciplinary nature) is many Bioinformaticians are actually moving to "Big Data" due to the very high pay . This might also suit you. Having done Bioinformatics your in a very good place for "Big data", as nothing has as much information and complexities as Biology. You can do certificate in Big data http://www.tomsitpro.com/articles/big-data-certifications,2-706-2.html

This would allow you to walk into a company like Amazon who are desperate for these type of people (Data mining, databases etc).

[michealsmith]

The reason there is a shortage (besides cross disciplinary nature) is many Bioinformaticians are actually moving to “Big Data” due to the very high pay

I do agree that many bioinformatician skills. esp. machine learning are quite needed for big data. But only one simple question: Is it required to hold some CS/DS degree to fully switch to data science from bioinformatics? I heard many HR would simply throw your CV away when they see "bioinformatics" because they don't know what is bioinformatics. Thx

Answer 2

[Garan]

If you're in the UK you could try going for a Clinical Scientist position in Clinical Bioinformatics (Genomics). I posted a description on this post:

Can anyone with clinical experience tell me how to get involved in medical informatics?

With a PhD, STP equivalency might well be an option (http://www.ahcs.ac.uk/equivalence/) - if not the new round of applications for the 3 year trainee scheme starts now (http://www.nshcs.org.uk/stp-recruitment Jan 2015 http://www.networks.nhs.uk/nhs-networks/msc-framework-curricula/stp) although this is an MSc level course, it is fully funded and paid at NHS afc band 6.

The work would probably be alongside other Clinical Geneticists and published works would come off the back of the cases you are involved in.