Career Development in Bioengineering and Biotechnology

This is going to be my first book review so bear with me. The way I’m going to write these review posts is quite simple. I’ll do a brief description of the contents, I will make a few comments and then I’ll either recommend it for reading or not. I will also indicate the depth or reading that I recommend which will be either diagonal reading, regular reading or in-depth reading. So let’s get to it.

Career Development in Bioengineering and Biotechnology is an edited book from Guruprasad Madhavan, Barbara Oakley and Luis Kun. The book has a series of short chapters grouped in five parts which try to give you an overall view of what are your options if you are a Bioengineer and what you should do to excel in your profession.

Part I defines what bioengineering and biotechnology is and the prospects in different geographical locations.

Part II describes and gives advice on traditional career paths such as academic research, teaching institutions, industry, national labs, law…

Part III is a collection of less obvious choices. Politics, writing non-fiction books, public relations, sports engineering and social entrepreneurship are a few examples. From this section I’ll keep the definition of social entrepreneur:

A social entrepreneur is someone who decides that something in society must change, then figures out how to change it, no matter what.

If you want some tips about career development and you’re not tired of hearing the same advice over and over again Part IV is for you.

Part V is probably the most interesting. Personal growth and professional responsibilities are the core. Here you will find somewhat philosophical essays talking about ethics and the role of biotechnology in the future of humanity. Titles such as ‘Science, Ethics and Human Destiny’, ‘Nonviolence for technocrats’, ‘Feeding the hungry’, ‘Enhancing humanity’ and ‘The art of achieving the Menschood’ should give you an idea of the topics you can find. Some are worth reading, some are dogmatic and some even religious driven. As I always say a good rule of thumb is you can always skip reading something if there is a direct quote from any ‘holy’ scripture.

Do you recommend it?: Yes (skipping parts I and II)
Depth of reading: Diagonal

OpenPCR

This article from Make Magazine caught my eyes. It’s about the project of Tito Jankowski and Josh Perfetto from a Biotech hackerspace in the Bay Area. It’s called OpenPCR. They have built a PCR system for a few hundred dollars. They even have a kit that you can buy and so that you can build one yourself. How cool is that?!

Granted, you might be able to look for an old thermocycler on eBay for about the same amount. But that’s not even close to being as cool as making your own at home. Plus bringing it to a Maker Faire is also an educational effort, now there’s a few more people who know what PCR is. It is just another example of what the DIYBio community is doing. Great job guys!

Here’s a video of their presentation in the Maker Faire.