The Cradle x Bits in Bio Survey aims to provide data to those who want to improve the software and tools used in the field. We hope that the community will discover insights on attitudes, tools, and environments influencing science and software today.
Survey Results are grouped into 5 sections:
- Bits in Bio
- Education, Work, and Career
- Goals & Objectives for protein engineers
- Software Technologies & Methods
- Basic Information & Final Questions
Read the results summary, survey methodology, and download the public data.
Acknowledgments
A huge thank you to all BioDevelopers who participated in this inaugural survey. Your contribution is greatly appreciated.
Feedback
As we plan to make this an annual survey, we welcome feedback on the first edition. We've already learned to shorten it for next year to make it easier to contribute.
Please share your thoughts on the following:
- Is "BioDeveloper Survey" the right name, or does it bias too much towards in silico work?
- Where should we share the survey to increase participation?
- What other improvements should we consider?
Please email survey@cradle.bio with your suggestions! For any technical issues or feedback concerning this website, please reach out to stateoftechbio@nitro.bio.
Survey Data
Download Data
How did you hear about Bits in Bio?
154
Respondents
Word of mouth (a colleague or friend)
51/154 respondents33%I hadn't heard about Bits in Bio before
12/154 respondents8%Bits in Bio Meetup
6/154 respondents4%How frequently would you say you go on the Bits in Bio Slack Channel during a typical month?
143
Respondents
Never
44/143 respondents31%A few times per week
31/143 respondents22%A few times per month or weekly
28/143 respondents20%Less than once per month or monthly
18/143 respondents13%Daily or almost daily
16/143 respondents11%Which part of Bits in Bio do you find most useful?
140
Respondents
Slack community
60/140 respondents43%Meetup
14/140 respondents10%Q&As
14/140 respondents10%Job Board/channel
12/140 respondents9%Hackathons
6/140 respondents4%Do you consider yourself a member of the Bits in Bio community?
144
Respondents
Yes, definitely
21/144 respondents15%Yes, somewhat
55/144 respondents38%No, not really
31/144 respondents22%No, not at all
32/144 respondents22%Not sure
5/144 respondents3%What sources do you use to keep up to date in your field?
155
Respondents
Biorxiv
93/155 respondents60%Journals
85/155 respondents55%Conferences
79/155 respondents51%Google scholar
77/155 respondents50%Which of the following best describes your current employment status?
156
Respondents
Employed Full time
118/156 respondents76%PhD-student or post-doc
24/156 respondents15%Independent contractor, freelancer, or self-employed
13/156 respondents8%Student, full-time
7/156 respondents4%Not employed, but looking for work
6/156 respondents4%What is the main focus in your current role? Select all that apply
144
Respondents
Computational Biologist / Bio-informatician
61/144 respondents42%Software Engineer
44/144 respondents31%Data Scientist
43/144 respondents30%Management
28/144 respondents19%ML Engineer/Researcher
26/144 respondents18%Do you use machine learning in your work?
106
Respondents
Yes
77/106 respondents73%No
29/106 respondents27%Would you be interested in using machine learning in your work?
28
Respondents
Yes
23/28 respondents82%No
5/28 respondents18%Do you consider yourself to be working in industry or academia?
144
Respondents
Industry
105/144 respondents73%Academia
37/144 respondents26%Other
2/144 respondents1%What industry does your organisation operate in?
102
Respondents
Pharma
71/102 respondents70%Basic / Fundamental research
26/102 respondents25%Food & Nutrition
13/102 respondents13%Agriculture
9/102 respondents9%Chemicals
7/102 respondents7%Approximately how many people are employed by the company or organization you currently work for?
105
Respondents
Just me - I am a freelancer, sole proprietor, etc.
4/105 respondents4%2 - 19 employees
30/105 respondents29%20-99 employees
18/105 respondents17%100-499 employees
22/105 respondents21%500- 4,999 employees
13/105 respondents12%5,000 or more employees
18/105 respondents17%Has your work involved protein engineering?
154
Respondents
Yes
44/154 respondents29%Not yet - but I'm curious to explore protein engineering in the future
64/154 respondents42%No
46/154 respondents30%What types of proteins have you worked with over the past 12 months?
44
Respondents
Enzymes
27/44 respondents61%Antibodies
13/44 respondents30%Short peptides
13/44 respondents30%Gene regulatory proteins
11/44 respondents25%Structural proteins
7/44 respondents16%What types of proteins do you want to work on over the next 12 months?
90
Respondents
Enzymes
48/90 respondents53%Gene regulatory proteins
40/90 respondents44%Antibodies
38/90 respondents42%Short peptides
24/90 respondents27%Structural proteins
21/90 respondents23%Which of the following design objectives have you done extensive work on over the past 12 months?
37
Respondents
Improve binding affinity
14/37 respondents38%Discover & Find novel activity / function
13/37 respondents35%Improve codon usage
11/37 respondents30%Stability optimization
11/37 respondents30%Improve (heterologous) expression
10/37 respondents27%Which of the following design objectives do you plan to work on over the next 12 months?
70
Respondents
Stability optimization
31/70 respondents44%Discover & Find novel activity / function
30/70 respondents43%Improve binding affinity
24/70 respondents34%Improve (heterologous) expression
19/70 respondents27%Improve codon usage
18/70 respondents26%How many candidates do you typically assay each round?
29
Respondents
24
9/29 respondents31%96
6/29 respondents21%384
3/29 respondents10%384-1536
4/29 respondents14%1.5k-10k
2/29 respondents7%How do you determine whether the tested variant performs better?
34
Respondents
Directly, via assaying the property of interest directly (in vitro)
24/34 respondents71%Indirectly, via measuring a proxy for improved behavior (in vivo, using e.g. a screening/reporter host)
21/34 respondents62%Other
1/34 respondents3%Do you code?
154
Respondents
Yes - I am comfortable writing code
130/154 respondents84%No - I don't write code
15/154 respondents10%Some - I modify other people's code, but rarely start from scratch.
9/154 respondents6%How did you learn to code?
138
Respondents
Just by doing it
102/138 respondents74%School or formal education
87/138 respondents63%Other online resources (example: videos, blogs)
62/138 respondents45%Books / physical media
40/138 respondents29%Online course or certification
35/138 respondents25%How often do you personally do data analysis for work?
138
Respondents
Weekly
103/138 respondents75%Monthly
15/138 respondents11%Every 3 months
4/138 respondents3%Rarely
13/138 respondents9%Never
3/138 respondents2%How often do you personally write scripts to automate workflows for work?
138
Respondents
Weekly
76/138 respondents55%Monthly
31/138 respondents22%Every 3 months
11/138 respondents8%Rarely
14/138 respondents10%Never
6/138 respondents4%Which of the following languages have you used in the past 12 months for data analysis?
135
Respondents
Python
131/135 respondents97%Shell (Bash/Powershell/etc)
84/135 respondents62%R
72/135 respondents53%SQL
56/135 respondents41%HTML/CSS
17/135 respondents13%Which of the following languages have you used in the past 12 months to write scripts to automate workflows?
130
Respondents
Python
118/130 respondents91%Shell (Bash/Powershell/etc)
81/130 respondents62%R
27/130 respondents21%SQL
14/130 respondents11%JavaScript
7/130 respondents5%Which of the following languages do you plan to work in over the next 12 months?
137
Respondents
Python
134/137 respondents98%R
59/137 respondents43%Shell (Bash/Powershell/etc)
82/137 respondents60%SQL
63/137 respondents46%JavaScript
30/137 respondents22%How often do you personally develop new tools and libraries for work?
129
Respondents
Weekly
46/129 respondents36%Monthly
21/129 respondents16%Every 3 months
25/129 respondents19%Rarely
26/129 respondents20%Never
10/129 respondents8%Other
1/129 respondents1%Which of the following languages have you used in the past 12 months to develop new tools and libraries?
117
Respondents
Python
108/117 respondents92%Shell (Bash/Powershell/etc)
38/117 respondents32%R
25/117 respondents21%C++
13/117 respondents11%SQL
13/117 respondents11%How often do you personally program data engineering / pipelines for work?
127
Respondents
Weekly
50/127 respondents39%Monthly
22/127 respondents17%Every 3 months
12/127 respondents9%Rarely
31/127 respondents24%Never
12/127 respondents9%How often do you personally do machine learning for work?
129
Respondents
Weekly
33/129 respondents26%Monthly
26/129 respondents20%Every 3 months
18/129 respondents14%Rarely
28/129 respondents22%Never
24/129 respondents19%How often do you personally program web interfaces for work?
129
Respondents
Weekly
24/129 respondents19%Monthly
10/129 respondents8%Every 3 months
17/129 respondents13%Rarely
33/129 respondents26%Never
45/129 respondents35%Which of the following languages have you used in the past 12 months to do program web interfaces?
80
Respondents
Python
53/80 respondents66%HTML/CSS
36/80 respondents45%JavaScript
34/80 respondents43%TypeScript
20/80 respondents25%R
13/80 respondents16%Which of the following databases have you done extensive work in over the past 12 months?
123
Respondents
PostgreSQL
44/123 respondents36%MySQL
27/123 respondents22%SQLite
24/123 respondents20%BigQuery
15/123 respondents12%MongoDB
14/123 respondents11%Which of the following databases do you want to work in over the next 12 months?
117
Respondents
PostgreSQL
41/117 respondents35%SQLite
26/117 respondents22%BigQuery
21/117 respondents18%MongoDB
20/117 respondents17%MySQL
18/117 respondents15%Which cloud platforms have you done extensive development work in over the past 12 months?
128
Respondents
AWS
75/128 respondents59%Google Cloud Platform
32/128 respondents25%Microsoft Azure
5/128 respondents4%Heroku
3/128 respondents2%DigitalOcean
2/128 respondents2%Which cloud platforms do you want to work with over the next 12 months?
95
Respondents
AWS
75/95 respondents79%Google Cloud Platform
33/95 respondents35%Microsoft Azure
14/95 respondents15%Heroku
5/95 respondents5%IBM Cloud or Watson
5/95 respondents5%When you are using data from another source, what formats does it come in (input data)?
145
Respondents
CSV/TSV
128/145 respondents88%JSON
92/145 respondents63%FASTA
90/145 respondents62%FASTQ
86/145 respondents59%BAM/SAM
60/145 respondents41%When you are storing data for analysis or later use which formats do you use (output data)?
144
Respondents
CSV/TSV
118/144 respondents82%JSON
59/144 respondents41%FASTA
47/144 respondents33%BAM/SAM
43/144 respondents30%FASTQ
34/144 respondents24%Which of the following data sources have you used extensively over the past 12 months?
143
Respondents
Literature
57/143 respondents40%Uniprot
53/143 respondents37%DDBJ/EMBL-EBI/NCBI
32/143 respondents22%KEGG
32/143 respondents22%RCSB / PDB
32/143 respondents22%Which of the following data sources do you want to work with over the next 12 months?
128
Respondents
Uniprot
45/128 respondents35%Literature
41/128 respondents32%RCSB / PDB
32/128 respondents25%DDBJ/EMBL-EBI/NCBI
28/128 respondents22%KEGG
28/128 respondents22%What tools and libraries have you used to visualize data over the last 12 months?
150
Respondents
Matplotlib
95/150 respondents63%Plotly
67/150 respondents45%Excel
55/150 respondents37%Ggplot
54/150 respondents36%Google Sheets
46/150 respondents31%What tools and libraries do you plan to use to visualize data over the next 12 months?
139
Respondents
Matplotlib
85/139 respondents61%Plotly
63/139 respondents45%Ggplot
47/139 respondents34%Excel
38/139 respondents27%Google Sheets
32/139 respondents23%Which of the following lab information management systems and electronic lab notebooks have you done extensive work in over the past 12 months?
135
Respondents
Benchling
48/135 respondents36%BaseSpace
10/135 respondents7%LabVantage
7/135 respondents5%Thermo Scientific SampleManager
4/135 respondents3%Labguru
3/135 respondents2%Which of the following LIMS and ELN do you want to work in over the next 12 months?
127
Respondents
Benchling
43/127 respondents34%LabVantage
8/127 respondents6%BaseSpace
7/127 respondents6%SciSpot
4/127 respondents3%Thermo Scientific SampleManager
4/127 respondents3%Which of the following, if at all, best describes you?
142
Respondents
Man
113/142 respondents80%Woman
19/142 respondents13%Prefer not to say
9/142 respondents6%Non-binary
1/142 respondents1%Which of the following best describes the highest level of formal education that youʼve completed?
154
Respondents
Other doctoral degree (Ph.D., Ed.D., etc.)
70/154 respondents45%Master's degree (M.A., M.S., M.Eng., MBA, etc.)
44/154 respondents29%Bachelor's degree (B.A., B.S., B.Eng., etc.)
34/154 respondents22%Professional degree (JD, MD, etc.)
3/154 respondents2%Some college/university study without earning a degree
2/154 respondents1%How do you feel about the length of this survey?
150
Respondents
Appropriate in length
87/150 respondents58%Too long
63/150 respondents42%How easy or difficult was this survey to complete?
149
Respondents
Easy
90/149 respondents60%Neither easy nor difficult
57/149 respondents38%Difficult
2/149 respondents1%