Before I transitioned fully into IT, I was still doing a lot of IT, but in a research context. But what does it mean for scientists to work with IT?
To give you a brief overview, I have a few descriptions of the work, here:
And I worked for a while in an area called “high performance computing” – which essentially means doing calculations that would ordinarily take up so much time, you need cutting-edge computers to speed things along.
Scientist vs. Supporter
Ultimately, through what I learned through my early work at national laboratories and in research, I tended to look at the world like this: if you are a scientist, you pursue a very limited set of research topics in great detail. But if you work to support science, then you contribute to a much greater number of scientific research activities – and hopefully many more people benefit from your contributions!