I've always wanted to change the world. Ever since I was a little kid I wanted to cure something, create a better world. I never wanted anything else.
I never considered med. school - not my skill set. I always knew I was good with computers and that was going to be how I changed the world.
I got a degree in CS and have been working for a bio-informatics startup for the past 4 years.
The Bio stuff is HARD. I work at the bleeding edge of research software and progress is excruciatingly slow.
Here's the chief reason why - money. The cost of starting a web based thingy is crazy low compared to a regular brick and mortar start up. The cost of a regular old brick and mortar startup is crazy low compared to a biotech startup.
So there's the first part of the money problem. The second part is who sets the tone.
The money that sets the tone is mostly the big pharma, VC money is tiny. Big pharma is doing its best to serve their shareholders. That means a lot of lifestyle treatments and few break though cures.
Why so few break through cures? Because taking a basic discovery, like say a new bio-marker through the regulatory purgatory cost something like $150 BILLION.
Don't quote on on that number, I may be off by a few billion. Big pharma is clogged with promising discoveries, but they chose to roll the dice on only a few of the most profitable looking.
How do you change all of that and make a better world. Simple:
Drastically bring down the cost of basic discovery.
How do you do that? That's not so easy.
1. Regulation is a bitch.
2. Bio-tech hardware had not been commoditised like PCs.
3. Testing "in silico" is currently more of a gimmick then a replacement for "in vivo" testing.
What are my plans given this situation?
I'll keep pounding away at my current job, bleeding edge scientific software does not pay a lot, too few customers, and those are usually university/government. The private sector money wants process improvement, not so much research.
Someday I hope I get the opportunity to work on protein folding. That will require a lot of CPU cores with very low latency between them. So all I need is a few years on some seriously big iron. Anyone care to fund a promissing young programmer with a crazy dream?
I've always wanted to change the world. Ever since I was a little kid I wanted to cure something, create a better world. I never wanted anything else.
I never considered med. school - not my skill set. I always knew I was good with computers and that was going to be how I changed the world.
I got a degree in CS and have been working for a bio-informatics startup for the past 4 years.
The Bio stuff is HARD. I work at the bleeding edge of research software and progress is excruciatingly slow.
Here's the chief reason why - money. The cost of starting a web based thingy is crazy low compared to a regular brick and mortar start up. The cost of a regular old brick and mortar startup is crazy low compared to a biotech startup.
So there's the first part of the money problem. The second part is who sets the tone.
The money that sets the tone is mostly the big pharma, VC money is tiny. Big pharma is doing its best to serve their shareholders. That means a lot of lifestyle treatments and few break though cures.
Why so few break through cures? Because taking a basic discovery, like say a new bio-marker through the regulatory purgatory cost something like $150 BILLION.
Don't quote on on that number, I may be off by a few billion. Big pharma is clogged with promising discoveries, but they chose to roll the dice on only a few of the most profitable looking.
How do you change all of that and make a better world. Simple:
Drastically bring down the cost of basic discovery.
How do you do that? That's not so easy.
1. Regulation is a bitch.
2. Bio-tech hardware had not been commoditised like PCs.
3. Testing "in silico" is currently more of a gimmick then a replacement for "in vivo" testing.
What are my plans given this situation?
I'll keep pounding away at my current job, bleeding edge scientific software does not pay a lot, too few customers, and those are usually university/government. The private sector money wants process improvement, not so much research.
Someday I hope I get the opportunity to work on protein folding. That will require a lot of CPU cores with very low latency between them. So all I need is a few years on some seriously big iron. Anyone care to fund a promissing young programmer with a crazy dream?