Jeff, your transition from a professional programmer with over a decade of experience in ads and web performance to a career in biosecurity is quite fascinating. Can you share what motivated or inspired you to make this significant switch in your career path? Additionally, do you believe that your impact on addressing global health threats is more substantial compared to your previous career, and what are the key differences you’ve noticed in terms of the impact you can make? Lastly, I hold a PhD in Medical Microbiologist considering switching my research career to biosecurity. What sincere advice or insights would you offer a person like me who is considering a switch to biosecurity this time as a researcher, based on your own experiences and observations in your new role? A Major hurdle has been securing funding, impact for a researcher comes with increased funding. As someone who has funded research, what attracts you to a project to fund?
Can you share what motivated or inspired you to make this significant switch in your career path?
I wrote some about this at the time but my biggest motivation was that, given the situation with funding and talent, I thought it was pretty likely that organizations would rather have my time than my money? This is not what I thought earlier on: in, say, 2013, there were a ton of really important things people could have been doing if they had the money, and very little funding available.
My sense of where I would be most altruistically useful, earning versus doing, changed around 2016, but for a long time I continued earning to give because I couldn’t find projects that I thought were were a good fit for my interests, abilities, and constraints.
Do you believe that your impact on addressing global health threats is more substantial compared to your previous career, and what are the key differences you’ve noticed in terms of the impact you can make?
This is tricky to answer, because the main impact of my new line of work comes from helping flag a pandemic earlier than we would otherwise, plus some deterrence. We don’t yet have a system up that could flag anything, let alone a system that has flagged anything, so there’s a sense in which my impact so far in my new role has been zero. But I think my impact in expectation is still much more substantial than it would have been had I continued with my previous approach.
I hold a PhD in Medical Microbiologist considering switching my research career to biosecurity. What sincere advice or insights would you offer a person like me who is considering a switch to biosecurity this time as a researcher, based on your own experiences and observations in your new role?
That’s great!
What is your background within medical microbiology?
I’m not sure where you are along in your process of considering this, so I may be offering advice that is not at the right level, but my normal advice here would be to start with the 80,000 hours problem profile and start by thinking about whether you’re a better fit for biosecurity policy or concrete technical work. Happy to answer more detailed questions if you’ve already narrowed your search down some!
As someone who has funded research, what attracts you to a project to fund?
I haven’t directly funded very much: most of my donations have been via funds, where smaller donors pool their money and a grantmaker reviews applications and makes decisions.
Hi Jeff, thanks for your response. I hold a PhD in Medical Microbiology and am a lecturer in the Department of Microbiology, at Plateau State University, Bokkos, Nigeria. My passion lies in deciphering how this changing climate fosters the emergence of novel and more formidable pathogens, posing a grave risk to human lives. I believe that climate change will make us more vulnerable to pathogens like fungi, however, I am realising that ” natural pandemics” may not be an existential risk based on Toby Ord’s opinion in “The Precipice”. Do you think funders will be willing to fund research focused on looking at how climate change will lead to the evolution of pathogens leading to “natural” pandemics?
I think it’s pretty common within EA to think that pathogens evolving in the wild are very unlikely to present existential risks. We could be wrong on this, though, and a good first step could be to write up a top-level post here explaining why you see climate change-driven biological risks as potentially existential?
Jeff, your transition from a professional programmer with over a decade of experience in ads and web performance to a career in biosecurity is quite fascinating. Can you share what motivated or inspired you to make this significant switch in your career path? Additionally, do you believe that your impact on addressing global health threats is more substantial compared to your previous career, and what are the key differences you’ve noticed in terms of the impact you can make? Lastly, I hold a PhD in Medical Microbiologist considering switching my research career to biosecurity. What sincere advice or insights would you offer a person like me who is considering a switch to biosecurity this time as a researcher, based on your own experiences and observations in your new role? A Major hurdle has been securing funding, impact for a researcher comes with increased funding. As someone who has funded research, what attracts you to a project to fund?
I wrote some about this at the time but my biggest motivation was that, given the situation with funding and talent, I thought it was pretty likely that organizations would rather have my time than my money? This is not what I thought earlier on: in, say, 2013, there were a ton of really important things people could have been doing if they had the money, and very little funding available.
My sense of where I would be most altruistically useful, earning versus doing, changed around 2016, but for a long time I continued earning to give because I couldn’t find projects that I thought were were a good fit for my interests, abilities, and constraints.
This is tricky to answer, because the main impact of my new line of work comes from helping flag a pandemic earlier than we would otherwise, plus some deterrence. We don’t yet have a system up that could flag anything, let alone a system that has flagged anything, so there’s a sense in which my impact so far in my new role has been zero. But I think my impact in expectation is still much more substantial than it would have been had I continued with my previous approach.
That’s great!
What is your background within medical microbiology?
I’m not sure where you are along in your process of considering this, so I may be offering advice that is not at the right level, but my normal advice here would be to start with the 80,000 hours problem profile and start by thinking about whether you’re a better fit for biosecurity policy or concrete technical work. Happy to answer more detailed questions if you’ve already narrowed your search down some!
I haven’t directly funded very much: most of my donations have been via funds, where smaller donors pool their money and a grantmaker reviews applications and makes decisions.
Hi Jeff, thanks for your response. I hold a PhD in Medical Microbiology and am a lecturer in the Department of Microbiology, at Plateau State University, Bokkos, Nigeria. My passion lies in deciphering how this changing climate fosters the emergence of novel and more formidable pathogens, posing a grave risk to human lives. I believe that climate change will make us more vulnerable to pathogens like fungi, however, I am realising that ” natural pandemics” may not be an existential risk based on Toby Ord’s opinion in “The Precipice”. Do you think funders will be willing to fund research focused on looking at how climate change will lead to the evolution of pathogens leading to “natural” pandemics?
I think it’s pretty common within EA to think that pathogens evolving in the wild are very unlikely to present existential risks. We could be wrong on this, though, and a good first step could be to write up a top-level post here explaining why you see climate change-driven biological risks as potentially existential?
Thanks Jeff for the reply. I had written on climate change and emerging pathogens earlier. Here is the link to a thought I had earlier
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/wh6sCGu8qYMrAznJL/climate-change-and-emerging-fungal-infections-impacts
Thanks for sharing the post! I don’t see an argument in it for how emerging fungal infections could be potentially civilization-ending, though?