A few years back, I noticed a friend’s LinkedIn update that he was working for Entagen, a company doing life sciences work in the Twin Cities. And I knew that I had to jump at the chance to get into life science programming. I was subcontracted to do some work at Novartis - the research branch in particular (NIBR) and then quickly found myself working on a project to manage and merge all public genomic data. I’m so thankful to the people that made that all happen.
And I’ve never looked back. It’s been 3 years, a move to a new country (Switzerland) and a new disease area (Oncology) and I love my work. I love learning the science and seeing where good software engineering can make a difference. If “bioinformatician” means a “software engineer that uses their knowledge of biology” - then I now call myself a bioinformatician.
It’s been a while since I was blogging - but I’m going to start up again. However, the blog will be more focused on the state of software engineering in the life sciences (from my one perspective) and where technology is going in this space. Stay tuned…