A recent PhD and extensive practical research experience in the fields of bioinformatics or computational biology is required along with at least one research project as evidenced by a first author paper published or accepted in a well recognized peer-reviewed journal. Good programming skills in R as well as either C or Python are also essential. Familiarity with graph theory and algorithms.
Description: A programmer/analyst with strong computational skills is wanted to work on high throughput sequence data and data integration. Specifically this position will help process and develop analysis paradigms for data from The Cancer Genome Atlas project, the ENCODE
project and the modENCODE projects. These data will be integrated with other data to help provide better models for interpreting high throughput genomic data.
Requirements:
MS/PhD in computer science, statistics, bioinformatics or related field
Excellent working knowledge of R
Experience with C, Java or Python an asset
Experience with next-gen sequencing data an asset
Ability to work independently
Good oral and written communication skills
How to acquire a company in emerging market
- Overview
This is from the notes taken from CEN's (China Entrepreneur Network @ Michigan) first SHARE (Study, Hunt/Exploe, Area of interest, Resource, Enlargement/Extend) meeting. The speaker successfully acquired a Chinese manufacturing company and put it public on Nasdaq. The scenario is not necessarily readily applicable to young starters, but it is definitely enlightening. Here I will give a brief summary of the whole picture. - Summary
Successfully acquired/merged a company from China and pushed it public on Nasdaq. - SWOC analysis
Strength: the person who brought up the idea had over thirty years of experience in the manufacturing field. This not only brought him profound insight into the market, but also solid network and rich resources even in the beginning phase. He also have worked in emerging markets himself for several years and nurtured local connections over time. This is what most of the young starters are lacking.
Weakness: the risk in emerging market is always high with a large number of unpredictable parameters. The insufficient familiarity with dynamics in emerging markets could be fatal in decision making. Also as a pioneer in the field also means there's a scarcity of working models to convince investors to spread capitals.
Opportunity: emerging market is definitely where the next boom will be on going. The gain could be well beyond expectations. There are numerous companies in Asia that are willing to be transformed as an international entity. This could easily turn out to be win-win.
Challenge: as everyone is gazing upon the emerging market, the number of competitors could be large, and they can easily beat a small team with resource advantages. The key is to find the right niche to fit in, to determine a balance of profit to risk. The continuous growth potential of emerging markets are still undetermined, many projections are rerquired to be made. - How they made it
First of all, come up with an idea. The idea is you can begin with a novel idea and manufacture it later, or take some existing business in Asia and put it public in New York. As at the end of the day many companies will become public anyway, and given their rich expertise and resources in the field, the choose the merger path. After the idea has been dafted, find a team of experts. This includes Tax, Legal, public relations, financing,etc. Again, the networks they built up over years paid back at this time: otherwise you will pay good money to higher people to do the job.
When the team has been finalized and everyone signed the confidential documents, they registered a shell company. This shell company has only a team of board members, and its objective is to encapsulate a REAL company in emerging market, and put it on Nasdaq. In this sense, it's only a matter of changing the company's name and management titles, the majority of operations will remain the same. They registered the company in British Virgin Islands (BVI) for tax benefits.
After this step is done, it's time to find the potential targets to fill in the shell. In their case, they targeted companies in China with capitals ranging from 40mil to 70mil. If the number goes higher then they meet the competitions from private equity funds. If the number goes lower then I guess the cost to profit will not be appealing. If no good targets are available, the shell can also take several companies and consolidate them into one, however the overhead could be a lot more. The target is also to acquire more than 50% of the shares, in their case, 100% shares. It will also take a lot of research and work there to make the final proposal more passable at the investors.
Finally, they bring all the researches and prelim proposals to an underwriter. There are many of them available, some a especially specialized in dealing with emerging market investments. Once the underwriter finishes the business plan, the chances of getting investors money is very high - in their case, the guess is 95%. The key is to find specialized team, experienced people, and be focused. If all the factors are satisfied, the chances of getting it work is very high. - Some other thoughts
This whole scenario will not be very applicable to young starters as many of them here don't have the resources to build up the team. Although they mentioned the young people in some of similar teams, in my opinion it is still very difficult for young people to pass their voices senior people up the hierarchy. The advantages of young people is they always stay on the frontier of development; they are rapid adapting at novel ideas and they are wiling for change. But there's a significant gap between "works at school" and "works in real life", young starters tend to be over optimistic and over idealistic.
A more applicable model for young people is to ride the tide, in my opinion. Our disadvantage is also our advantage: we are not trained by the market yet, so our perspectives could provide a unique view to a senior team. Some of the experienced people may not want to keep up with the dynamics anymore, they could just want us to summarize for them, or tell them what the latest changes are, or what we think about a certain change. Speak many languages is certainly a huge plus, also familiarity with multi disciplines. This boils down to my original thought of "always learn a transferable method, a generic technique, a system of problem-solving skills which can be applied on massive and distinct matters".
