Comments on: Freelancing science - today and tomorrow

By: Open science 0.9 beta « A Man With A Ph.D.

Open science 0.9 beta « A Man With A Ph.D. — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 18:08:28 +0000

[...] Networks on how to enable collaboration occurred almost at the same time as Pawel Szczeny was blogging on freelance science. I then hooked up with Pawel to solve a problem in my research; as far as we know the first example [...]

By: Open science 0.9 beta

Open science 0.9 beta — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 18:00:52 +0000

By: Science in the open » The science exchange

Science in the open » The science exchange — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 08:24:00 +0000

By: Pawel Szczesny

Pawel Szczesny — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 10:39:49 +0000

Kay, Ntino, thanks for comments.

Kay, I’m pretty aware of limits one is facing as a consultant (I started to research the topic after reading your blog posts). That’s why academic affiliation is something I’m not willing to give away just like that - it makes enourmous difference in everyday scientific work. Concerning the grant agencies in Germany, it’s probably the same everywhere - that’s why I opt so strongly for non-academic funding, where these things like degree and such doesn’t matter that much.
BTW, I realized that I’m typing this only 250km from your location (I’m doing my PhD in Germany, remotely of course, and till the end of the week I’m writing a paper with my supervisor in here ).

Ntino, I think it really depends on the area and one’s interests. While in general being a big shot means not enough time for coding stuff by yourself, I know few cases where a head of department/institute hides for few hours a week to play with his old fortran code…

By: Kay at Suicyte

Kay at Suicyte — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 10:19:03 +0000

Pawel,
I really hope that you are going to be successful! I think that the chances of your approach strongly depend on the country you are working in. In Germany (my current country of residence) I am afraid that this approach would not be viable. For once, there are formal hurdles (no grants without a position secured throughout the grant period, probably no grants without a PhD. In addition, there will always be the scepticism by grant agencies and reviewer “why this person has chosen a non-traditional career path”. The explanation usually seen as the most likely one is that the person has failed in the usual acadmic world and has to resort to a non-traditional approach. I don”t think that this explanation applies to you, but people will always assume this at first - it is going to be an uphill battle.
As far as I can tell, the only way of working as a ‘freelancing scientist” hereabouts would be as some kind of consultant. However, this would immediately make you a ‘for-profit’ entity, and you will be amazed what tools and services you are no longer allowed to use. I work in the biotech industry myself and had several painful experiences in what amount of money some (academic) people are charging for the permission to use their web servers.

By: nsaunders

nsaunders — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 05:59:11 +0000

As a final comment, it seems to me that technically oriented people in bioinformatics would rather loose by staying in academia

Oh, don’t get me started on that. No, no I’m not even going there…

By: The new science : business|bytes|genes|molecules

The new science : business|bytes|genes|molecules — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 05:33:41 +0000

[...] a blog post Pawel writes I’m neither a genius nor a big shot but I have bunch of ideas I consider cool and which I’d [...]

By: Ntino Krampis

Ntino Krampis — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 05:01:26 +0000

Plus as a tenured professor, year by year you get further away from doing the actual technical stuff, and ending up going from meeting to meeting and performing politics. Yes you might be doing some brainstorming, but you have other people implementing your ideas (because you go to meetings all the time?)…. There’s no such pleasure of applying detailed knowledge of a tool (programming language, operating system etc) to the solution of a problem. However much stuff you hack, you always want to learn more and go deeper in a tech-tool that interests you (that’s in response to those who’d say as you get older, you’d enjoy doing politics because you get burned out by coding).

As a final comment, it seems to me that technically oriented people in bioinformatics would rather loose by staying in academia, cause the ones to whom the lights shine upon are those who get out and talk “big ideas” (tenured, abstract, high-level-management-type thinking academics?),,,, and the ones behind the scenes implementing the actual stuff never get recognized fully.

By: Pawel Szczesny

Pawel Szczesny — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 16:09:41 +0000

Antony, Chris, Dan, thank you for your comments.

As Chris pointed out, there are many ways to get one’s research funded. If I can do it my way, it would be great, but I’m already quite happy with a freedom of not being glued to a place and avoiding all work-related duties. My feeling is that my current status is just a beginning, because there’s a lot of choices (real startup, non-profit, consulting) that I wouldn’t even think about while climbing academic ladder.

By: Dan

Dan — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 08:29:32 +0000

Wow, somebody in an almost analagous position to me.

Whilst I’m not technically freelancing (I am employed by an institution), I’m not tied into the typical academic rat race. I’m also a bioinformatician, and the salaries, computers, software costs (minimal ;)) come from being costed into other peoples grants, and recouping money through work for billable projects (largely traditional db projects for clinicians). Our raison d’etre is to support biological research, and sit somewhere between the biologists and the bioinformatics research groups - a translational service if you like

Apart from the fact I don’t have to do great rounds of grant applications myself, and was lucky enough to get a couple of years ’startup’ funding - the real boon of this job is that I maybe have 10 to 15 very different projects ongoing, rather than 1. This keeps my interest in things very much alive - having a bad day with someone’s microarray data? Go and do the things on the ‘neuroinformatics’ list instead.

I don’t think this way of working is necessarily easier than a straight 3 year position in a research group, but it’s working for me right now - and I hope it works for you too.