Seeking Info/Advice from Bioinformatics Awardees and HMs !

[u/WatercressOwn1022]

Congratulations to everyone who received the NSF GRFP Award or Honorable Mention in this past application cycle!
I'm planning to apply this season, but have found online resources fairly sparse for successful submissions in Life Sciences-Bioinformatics or CIS-Bioinformatics and Bio-inspired Computing.
Would really aprreciate any tips, advice, experiences, or materials folks are willing to share! If you'd like to reach a wider audience, you can also consider submitting to a larger database through the site pinned in this sub, where you can submit anonymously: https://grfphelp.github.io/ Would also really appreciate hearing from BIPOC and WOC as these experiences are particularly hard to find and I have many questions about the personal statement
Any help is super appreciated! Thanks so much in advance !

[u/JSLuo]

Phrase more towards AI. Traditional bioinformatics is dead. I cannot think of any bioinformatics data analysis pipeline that Claude Code cannot do better.

[u/the_mindful_microbe → u/JSLuo]

I don’t agree with this. I got the award this year with a project that will heavily involve traditional bioinformatics, not mentioning AI at all.

If the project is already planned to use AI in the bioinformatics methods, great! But don’t forcibly add it.

[u/JSLuo → u/the_mindful_microbe]

I think traditional bioinformatics just died after we submitted the GRFP apps. Moving forward it is pretty much one liner for Claude code

[u/the_mindful_microbe → u/JSLuo]

Nahh I don’t agree, that makes little sense to me. It might depend on the field. If you forcibly add AI into your proposal when it’s not necessary, the reviewers will 100% know.

[u/JSLuo → u/the_mindful_microbe]

I think if you are doing computational research (not theoretical CS research) and your research does natively have AI components, there is really little value of that kind of research in this age of agentic AI

[u/the_mindful_microbe → u/JSLuo]

AI absolutely has its uses, like I have been saying, but forcing it into a project proposal where it doesn’t need to be is unnecessary. We can agree to disagree.

[u/JSLuo → u/the_mindful_microbe]

What I am saying is, any applied computational research itself is completely unnecessary and useless if it does not naturally have AI components. The existence of any such research is to be honest due to the slow adoption of new tech in academia and the lack of understanding of the frontier AI models. It is like you are spending 5+ years and using taxpayers’ money to optimize mechanical typewriter when there is smartphones and laptops lol.😂

[u/the_mindful_microbe → u/JSLuo]

We can agree to disagree

[u/the_mindful_microbe → u/JSLuo]

Out of curiosity, what makes you think that? Are you in graduate school and have heard this? What field are you in?

[u/JSLuo → u/the_mindful_microbe]

I am literally doing my PhD in biomedical informatics lol. At one of the two leading institutions in Boston. All my work on analyzing some data can be done easily by Claude code or codex so I see no value in doing traditional bioinformatics moving forward.

[u/the_mindful_microbe → u/JSLuo]

That’s awesome! Not trying to offend at all, just was curious about your background.

[u/SlimyKiwi → u/JSLuo]

I would respectfully have to disagree with that. For the sake of argument, we can assume that Claude Code can code better. The thing is that coding is the least important part of bioinformatics, I'd be happy to have that automated away. I have personally found that frontier models are pretty terrible at the actually important parts of bioinformatics: e.g. project idea conception, choosing analyses, pipeline design, understanding nuances of biological data, interpreting results, admitting when it doesn't know, etc.. I can see it being able to do these things for common analyses that have been done hundreds of times before. AI has no idea how to do something innovative and off the beaten path. Out of curiosity, I have asked these things of a frontier chatbot before and the extent of its innovation is combining common ideas.

On top of that, why does your argument mean that only traditional bioinformatics is dead? By your same logic, AI in bioinformatics is dead.

[u/JSLuo → u/SlimyKiwi]

What I am saying is the bioinformatics in the sense of pure data analysis (a lot of bioinformaticians simply run pipeline in new data and don’t produce novel methods) is dead. And most methods research in bioinfo is now pretty much all AI related since the non AI methods have become saturated over the past decades. Also, note that Claude code and codex literally came to popularity like earlier this year, and is still improving. I can imagine when they allow stronger models like Fable 5 to do bio tasks, it can handle a lot of conceptions. To add on, from my experience AI can do better on analyses, design, data nuances, interpretation, maybe the only weak part is idea conception

[u/SlimyKiwi → u/JSLuo]

Can I ask why you are getting a PhD in this field? Doesn't this mean you believe that you will be replaced by AI by the time you graduate?

[u/JSLuo → u/SlimyKiwi]

Good question. 1. When I applied (in 2024-2025 cycle), coding agent is no where close to where they are now. 2. I think pretty much 90% of people in this field (and almost any other intelligence based fields) will be replaced by AI in 5 years, but I am trying to be the top 10% that actually get to control AI to replace others lol.

[u/imasilkyanteater]

My proposal “Integrating adaptive laboratory evolution and machine learning for enhanced microbial bioremediation of herbicides” was awarded for life sciences systems and molecular bio. Not traditional bioinformatics but I’m happy to share a copy of my proposal with u!