Jeffrey Chang nicely describes the necessity for more attractive career paths for applied bioinformaticians and underpins them with his personal experiences. He requests bioinformatics training for biologist to fill the gap of people, which are required to analyze the huge amounts of data produced by modern biology projects. The key message is: It remains a challenge to encourage talented people for our field, as long as applied bioinformaticians are evaluated based on their first author publications, instead of their impact in interdisciplinary collaborations.
Luckily, our network’s initiators have foreseen these shortcomings and launched INTERCROSSING. Our ITN provides 13 ESR positions to address the absence of attractive career paths for young researchers. Our training in bioinformatics and related topics enables us to tackle tomorrow’s biological data challenges as described in the comment. INTERCROSSING’s network of ESRs and lead scientists is a strong and powerful foundation for future collaborations and career opportunities, where applied bioinformaticians will be valued as creative collaborators.