did you work on side projects, do some sort of fellowship, or jump straight to applying for jobs in biosecurity?
I did a lot of reading, and a side project around air filtration (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7) that I don’t think was all that helpful, but mostly I talked to people in the field about what was missing. I think it helped a lot that I was a bit of a known quantity: I’d been writing publicly for a long time which let people have a sense of what to expect from me.
why/​how did you choose the Nucleic Acid Observatory?
Based on my reading and talking with people in biosecurity I thought the NAO was aiming to solve a really important problem and it had a lot of good people but the group as a whole was too academic: not enough experience building things, learning by doing, or moving quickly. This seemed like a project where my skills were very complementary, and I think that did end up being the case.
interested in pivoting to either biosecurity or cybersecurity
Great to hear! I don’t have a good sense of what would make sense. The NAO isn’t currently hiring, but at some point it’s possible we’ll be looking for engineers and for candidates who were sufficiently strong elsewhere not having a bio background wouldn’t be a blocker.
I do think working on side projects is often pretty good for getting a sense of whether you like the work and other people seeing what you can do. And with LLMs it’s easier than ever to get spun up in new domains.
I don’t really have good advice on how to get into the field, though; sorry!
I did a lot of reading, and a side project around air filtration (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7) that I don’t think was all that helpful, but mostly I talked to people in the field about what was missing. I think it helped a lot that I was a bit of a known quantity: I’d been writing publicly for a long time which let people have a sense of what to expect from me.
Based on my reading and talking with people in biosecurity I thought the NAO was aiming to solve a really important problem and it had a lot of good people but the group as a whole was too academic: not enough experience building things, learning by doing, or moving quickly. This seemed like a project where my skills were very complementary, and I think that did end up being the case.
Great to hear! I don’t have a good sense of what would make sense. The NAO isn’t currently hiring, but at some point it’s possible we’ll be looking for engineers and for candidates who were sufficiently strong elsewhere not having a bio background wouldn’t be a blocker.
I do think working on side projects is often pretty good for getting a sense of whether you like the work and other people seeing what you can do. And with LLMs it’s easier than ever to get spun up in new domains.
I don’t really have good advice on how to get into the field, though; sorry!