Hi everyone, I’m a recent M.S. in Bioinformatics graduate (Aug 2025) currently working in a wet-lab role with little to no opportunity to apply my computational skills. I’m trying to pivot back into bioinformatics and I’m looking for hands-on experience opportunities and practical advice on the most realistic path forward as someone who is no longer a current student.

I’m comfortable with core RNA-seq/genomics workflow steps (QC, alignment, quantification, differential expression, functional annotation/enrichment, and visualization), and I’m used to writing clear summaries of methods and results.

Questions:

1. For someone in my position (recent grad), what are the best ways to get real project experience—labs, short-term collaborations, open-source, contract/part-time work, or something else?
2. If I want to contribute to a research group remotely in a small, well-scoped way, what types of tasks are most helpful to offer (QC support, documentation, reproducibility checks, pipeline runs, etc.)?