A Transition .

Recently, I left the world of software engineering and startups to enter academic clinical research. Specifically, I work now as a Data Analyst at the Brain Stimulation Lab at Stanford. The lab studies the use of neuromodulation (i.e., non-invasive methods of altering brain activity) in psychiatric diseases like depression and OCD.Thus, instead of building a website, I work on data pipelines and the analysis of neuroimaging data (e.g., MRI and EEG).

There were many reasons for this change. I want to become a physician and doing clinical research is certainly closer to that (as well as being better for a medical school application). I was also very tired of software engineering. I found the work to be uninteresting — web development is not something I am passionate about. I also found the work to be unrewarding, as most of my efforts seemed to be in vain. Often, the features that I worked on would be unused or did not have the impact that was promised during the planning phase.

So far, the benefits of this job change have outweighed the costs. I have learned as much in the past few weeks as I have in quite some time, as I’ve had a crash course in statistics, psychiatry, and neuroimaging. I find myself Googling term after term; everything from Cohen’s d to eddy currents.

In academia, unlike my last company, there is no free lunch every day. But I believe that helping someone get out of a debilitating condition like depression and contributing to scientific advancement will be much more fulfilling.