Do I Have A Chance To Hire A Bioinformatics Freelancer?

Question

[Pawel Szczesny]

Poland is no US/UK and when it comes to hiring people in bioinformatics - applications from experienced people are rare (well, inexperienced don't apply here either). There are not that many experts here, and people from other countries choose either prestige or money (or both).

With the recent grant I've just submitted, hiring options are quite flexible and I consider either outsourcing or hiring a freelancer for some parts of the project. I have some idea about potential workforce in case of outsourcing (I went through bioinformatics gigs on freelance sites), however I don't know if I have a chance of hiring somebody skilled on a flexible (and remote) contract.

I don't have the money yet (and it will take another half a year to know if I will have), but some decisions need to be made relatively fast, hence the questions:

What is the status of freelance bioinformatics right now? Do you know many freelancers in this field? Is it better to seek a academic collaboration instead of outsourcing/subcontracting?

EDIT: It seems that it's not that bad. Within 3 hours of posting the question two people contacted me stating that they are interested, even if I only expressed some interest to try something in the future.

[brentp]

from our experience, it's hard to find competent bioinformatics people even in the US.

[Pawel Szczesny]

Is it that bad? What's the reason? Lack of experience or many competing job offers?

[brentp]

I'd guess both, the competent ones find jobs quickly, or maybe the lab that they are in is more likely to hold on to them.

[Leszek]

what is your project exactly? I agree with Istvan it should be possible if you can split project into well-defined tasks and contract people/companies to specific parts.

[Pawel Szczesny]

Systems biology stuff (pathway modelling, reconstruction, etc.). Definitely something that could be relatively easy split into small tasks.

[Manu Prestat]

I don't know much about the status of a bioinformatic freelancer currently, but I know some "academic" people (in US) working "on the side" for a foreign company as a consultant. Maybe you could consider that option...

Answer 1

[Istvan Albert]

The fundamental problem with bioinformatics freelancing is that it is extremely difficult to predict the amount of work a project will take. In parallel to that qualified people probably have a job already.

I can only see it working if one would break down the entire project into a well formulated subtasks that can be treated/contracted out independently:

1. obtain data and filter it for quality/contamination etc, produce a comparison plots on why a given choice was made
2. run tool X1 as described in the methodology of paper Y1
3. run tool X2 as described in the methodology of paper Y2 ...
4. produce a file that contains the information Z in the format X

All along keep the scientific interpretation independent from producing the results. Saying "find overexpressed genes" could be too ambiguous, instead one would ask for a list of genes with expression levels and spell out the statistical test to be applied to them and specify how that result would be stored in the file as well. This way I think you have a good chance to hire talented beginners that could do a good number of the very time consuming tasks.

[Pawel Szczesny]

Thanks. I've been on the other side for quite some time and I wish I had worked for somebody who shaped the task exactly how you described ;).

Answer 2

[Ashutosh Pandey]

I think seeking a academic collaboration is a good alternative and in my opinion a better option. But it really depends on your project. If your project has to do with building a sophisticated web tool that deals with database and other stuff then outsourcing would be a better option. In case, you need to perform bunch of statistical analysis and writing bunch of scripts to process the data then I think collaboration with some lab that has graduate students will help. This will also ensure those students of their stipends. I think as a part of research community it would be better to support upcoming researchers. I am a graduate student too :-) and part of my funding comes from helping others by performing basic NGS analysis for them.

[Pawel Szczesny]

Interesting opinion. I always assumed that "side projects" of PhD students are the PI's worst nightmare. I didn't think that contribution to doctoral stipend makes the nightmare bearable.

[Manoj]

Academic collaborations could be very expensive, if the outside collaborator goes through regular channels of university office, because the overheads charged by universities are very high. If the outside collaborator hires the student on the side (moonlighting), then it becomes a nightmare for PI as Pawel explained.

Answer 3

[Manoj]

Our company Homolog.us) has been doing 'freelance' bioinformatics work with scientists and universities for over six years, and we can help you find someone, if you are interested. However, please note that 'bioinformatics skill' is very broadly defined as we explained here in these two commentaries.

http://www.homolog.us/blogs/2011/07/22/a-beginners-guide-to-bioinformatics-part-i/

http://www.homolog.us/blogs/2011/07/22/a-beginners-guide-to-bioinformatics-part-ii/

The skills needed for those layers are very different, and someone experienced in running Velvet or Trinity may not be good with writing code or designing algorithm (layers 4 and 5). Similarly, someone knowledgeable about statistical analysis of clinical trial data may not be able to help you with population biology. So, you may have to explain more specifically what level of skills you need and in which area. Please feel free to send me an email at samanta at homolog.us, if you have more question.

Answer 4

[jonathan.hedger]

Hi Pawel, you can see over 100 bioinformatics freelancer profiles listed here https://www.kolabtree.com/find-an-expert/subject/bioinformatics. There are registered freelancers from Poland including from University of Bialystok and Karolinska Institutet.

[Ram]

This is a 5 year old post :-)