KDBioSci

Like anyone who has worked in the commercial biotechnology science industry I have also spent time in academic science research in graduate school. There is definitely some rift between the two worlds of science. I find industry often doesn't know what is going on in nearby academic science centers, and academic science centers often don't want them to know because they think industry will steal their ideas just when they start working (There could be some truth to this.). The two science worlds should work closer together to grow the science pie. The government invests in academic research to improve health, improve the environment, improve lives and stimulate the economy and stimulating the economy is getting top billing now. Government investment is a fixed amount allocated each year. Academic scientists write grants to compete for their share of the pie. When one scientist wins another loses. Industry starts with basic science and applies it to problems (like diseases) to...

The genomics revolution is happening introducing personalized medicine but slower than most of us involved had hoped. One issue is that a disease have multiple genetic causes making traditional methods difficult. Medical imaging has the potential to separate subtypes of a disease based on what is seen in the medical image. Hopefully there are fewer genes involved in the medical image subtype making the genetic causes easier to identify. This explains why I have moved from genomic research to medical image processing. And I love creating these images.

Open source software allows you to modify the code for your own uses. I use so many different open source tools that I haven't become a regular contributor to any one project. The regular contributors are amazing, I don't know where they find the time. When you fix, modify or improve an open source software project, even if you don't become a regular contributor, send your changes to the project manager. People have been very good at including changes I have sent in. This will help you in the long run. If you change your code and don't send it back the project will release a new version that doesn't have your changes. If you upgrade to the new version you won't have your changes and will have to make the change over again. Eventually  you will end up with a forked older version and cannot benefit from the improvements in the new versions. For an organization this can turn into a really large problem when they hire new computer programmers that are used to th...

Research should be done in Towers not Parks to increase collaborations. Let's call them Glass Research Towers instead of Ivory Towers which have such an uncollaborative reputation. Buildings for research and technology venture companies should foster collaboration, Glass Towers can do this, Research Parks cannot. The typical Research Park is a large piece of land outside of town and one relatively low building is made for each institute or company. Companies or Institutes sign long term leases for the Park to make them a building. If an organization wants to expand it involves another long term lease and a long time to make a new low lying building. A small organization just getting started doesn't have the resources to sign a long term lease for an entire building. Small companies end up somewhere else in some kind of incubator. The Park employees drive their cars into their Institute, work, eat in the company or drive out of park (through a few limited access road s...

Collaborations have led to my best research results. Since my research involves developing software to analyze data I am always in need of useful data. I have received very interesting data from multiple sources. My collaborators and I will have publications out soon. The Internet, web-sites and e-mails are useful for finding and conducting collaborations. Interestingly the best collaborations always get going after we meet in person. The e-connections actually help us meet in  person other researchers we normally never would have met. Being able to transfer and share data through the Internet makes continuing work possible but it also means meeting more researchers in person.