First up this week, I want to brief you on the launch of a new training program that aims to bring the model of a coding bootcamp to biotech.
Coding bootcamps have proliferated here on the West Coast, as a way to train workers to get entry-level jobs in the booming tech industry. Now, Bay Area biohacker Josiah Zayner wants to adapt that idea in biotech, with an online education program aimed at teaching job seekers how to pipette and centrifuge in the lab.
What will the new “biotech school” look like? Students will be asked to watch weekly online lectures, read scientific papers, and to try out lab techniques from home, such as running gel or performing a polymerase chain reaction, a method commonly used to copy DNA segments. To make that possible, the ODIN — Zayner’s small company that sells equipment for do-it-yourself science — will send students shipments of pipettes, centrifuges, and other equipment typically found in a basic molecular biology lab.
The ODIN will foot all costs for the first cohort of about 10 Bay Area students that Zayner is trying to recruit for the first run of the program. The goal will be to help them land jobs as research assistants and research associates at local biotech companies, Zayner told me.
If the first run of the program succeeds, Zayner said he'll aim to expand it beyond the Bay Area and use a model similar to that of many coding bootcamps, in which job seekers don’t pay anything upfront but then pay the program a percentage of their salary after they secure a job.
Will the model work? It may not be easy. Many companies in the sector are reluctant to hire people who don’t have specialized scientific degrees from traditional universities. And broader industry shifts are creating headwinds, too, as a new wave of synthetic biology startups aims to use technology to automate many of the simple tasks that entry-level lab researchers often perform.
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