Hey everyone, I'm currently an undergraduate doing my B.Tech (Biotechnology) current in my final year and seriously considering pursuing a Master’s in Bioinformatics / Computational Biology abroad (targeting Europe, US, Canada, etc.)

To be blunt: I’m a fairly average student academically my GPA is very average and my academic profile isn't something that instantly turns heads. That said, I've developed a genuine interest in the computational side of biology and want to put in the work over the next several months to make myself somewhat good also get selected in a better college for my master's.

I came to the US a year ago for an MS in bioinformatics with a biology background and no coding experience. I’ve leaned on AI to get through assignments and just realized I can’t write code on my own.

I have one year left and want to be job-ready for roles in industry. If you were in my position:

1. What would you prioritize first?
2. What does an entry-level bioinformatician need to be able to do without help?
3. How do I use AI to actually learn instead of as a crutch?

Willing to put in the work, just want to put it in the right places.

I was fascinated by algorithmic side of biology for quite some time. I have no background in biology, but decided to do my masters by working on the project that combines relational database and alignment algorithms (so essentially you load FASTA into postgres and do alignment/sequence manipulation/writing it back to FASTA all via SQL). As a side effect I wrote very long overview of few strategies from various papers (mostly focused on minimap2).

I plan to combine it into some form of articles to be published (maybe) in some journal, but at this moment this is rather first version of long text going over stories of my prototypes, comparing minimap2 to other algorithms, some very specifics things about SIMD/SIMT. I think this could be valuable resource for someone, who is interested in writing on alignment software, but do not necessarily have enough background to understand what is happening. I worked on this as a hobby project for at least few years already (yeah my masters will wait some more).

The entire text was written manually by me so the graphs still contain overlaps, there are lots of typos and I some missing references in few places. Maybe someone will find it interesting.

I would like to hear your opinion on that. I suck at writing, but tried to sensibly collect most important info from other studies and software.

https://bioseqdb.com/v0.1/tutorials/project_alignment_foundations/

Hi, I'm a student and I made a game to practice designing RNA-seq experiments.

Each case is a researcher with a question and a budget. You choose replicates, library type, sequencing depth, batches and the analysis. Then the experiment is simulated and "Reviewer 2" reviews your design. Each comment cites a paper.

It's free and open source. It runs in the terminal on Windows, macOS and Linux. It's in English and Spanish.

It's still in development, so I'd like feedback, especially if something is scientifically wrong or a case isn't realistic.

https://github.com/leomorgzzz/reviewer2

Hi everyone,

I’m currently a 2nd-year Biotechnology BSc student studying in Czechia. Over the past year, I’ve developed a clear vision of where I want to go: I’m highly interested in structural biology, protein modeling, and CADD.

I don't have a personal network in this specific niche yet, so I’m hoping to get some advice from professionals here. This summer, I spent my free time taking online courses (including Schrödinger's PyMOL and Molecular Modeling courses, and EMBL-EBI's PDBe programmatic access course), attended an in-person BioSAXS practical workshop, and did my first molecular docking in Maestro.

I have a few questions about navigating my future career:

• Remote work vs. Coding: I would love to work remotely in the future, but I don't want to be a full-time programmer. I am not afraid of coding (I use Python for scripts), but I want the core of my work to be science and structure analysis, not just SWE. What specific roles or niches in bioinformatics/CADD allow for this balance?
• Choosing a Master's: I’m really struggling to find suitable Master's programs. The descriptions on university websites are often vague. What keywords should I be looking for, or how do I evaluate if a program is actually good for a CADD/industry focus?
• Finding a Community: How do I find my "tribe"? Are there active Discord servers, specific forums, or online groups for people passionate about structural biology and drug design?
• Gaining early experience: I am incredibly eager to start doing actual work or assisting with projects right now, even unpaid. Is remote volunteering or assisting on computational projects a thing? How should I approach researchers or startups about this?
• Industry over Academia: I know early on that I don't want to stay in academia long-term. I want to work in industry or join a biotech startup. What should I be focusing on right now to make myself an attractive candidate for industry straight out of my studies?

Thank you in advance for any insights, reality checks, or advice!

I have been building The Omics Hub as a free educational resource for researchers learning bioinformatics.

It includes tutorials on:

• Linux and command-line foundations
• HPC and Slurm
• Conda and reproducible environments
• R and Python
• Single-cell RNA-seq and spatial transcriptomics
• Genomics, metagenomics, and phylogenomics
• Workflow management and reproducibility
• Responsible use of AI tools in research

The goal is to explain the biological reasoning behind each step instead of providing commands without context.

I would appreciate constructive feedback from the bioinformatics community:

https://theomicshub.com/

Hi all, I have built this for bioinformatics, but it really can be useful for anything, see this (pretty useless) toy example (https://codeberg.org/bio-pype/test\\_workflows/src/branch/main/video\\_processing)

Anyone preparing for the application for fall 2027, reaching out for guidance 🙃

What proprietary datasets do you wish you could have access to for training and tuning your models?

Hola a todos, soy programador y estudiante de bioinformática. Busco voluntariado en bioinformática para actualizar y mejorar mis habilidades.

¿Alguna sugerencia sobre dónde buscar?