Its been a more than 2 weeks since I’ve been jobless and on the lookout for projects to work on. Of the innumerous projects on the market and over a hundred telephone calls … so far I came close to finalizing 3 projects (after being let down for a few) -

1) a complex J2EE project at a top investement bank in John Hancock tower@ Boston
2) Java/J2EE programmer at Harvard Business School campus
3) Computerworld Honors 21st Century Achievement Award for Science, probably one of the biggest open source projects in Health & Science today., a next generation Cancer Research project funded by Government and National Cancer Research Institute with some very great minds at work with you working from home/office

Finally the opensource project was confirmed!

For a lot of reasons close to my passions and my recent blasphemy on why we are spending millions of $$$ in software without really adding value to human value, life and quality, the quest has just found it’s peripheries. The quintessential urge to do exactly what you want to do without a corporate culture and contributing to the open source with technologies galore is something I couldnt ask for more! This would be a great challenge and shift in perspective as I’m coming from a mid management role currently …

What is this Program/Mission all about? (random bits taken from the website)

caBig

About caBIGâ„¢ – The cancer Biomedical Informatics Grid, or caBIGâ„¢, is a voluntary network or grid connecting individuals and institutions to enable the sharing of data and tools, creating a World Wide Web of cancer research. The goal is to speed the delivery of innovative approaches for the prevention and treatment of cancer. The infrastructure and tools created by caBIGâ„¢ also have broad utility outside the cancer community. caBIGâ„¢ is being developed under the leadership of the National Cancer Institute’s Center for Bioinformatics

NCI awarded the 2006 Computerworld Honors 21st Century Achievement Award for Science

The NCI was awarded the 2006 Computerworld Honors 21st Century Achievement Award for Science for their accomplishment under caBIGâ„¢ Program. They were selected from a field of 9 candidates from around the world. Peter Covitz (Chief Operating Officer of the NCICB) accepted the award on behalf of the NCI.

The Computerworld Honors Program is dedicated to a singular and ongoing mission: “A Search for New Heroes.” This search annually identifies and records the accomplishments of the men and women, organizations and institutions that are creating the global best practices in leading the world’s ongoing IT revolution.

Introduction to caBIG roadmap

A multimedia presentation

caBIGâ„¢ Participants – Over 800 people from more than 80 organizations are working collaboratively on over 70 projects in a three-year pilot project. Workspace specific information, materials and online forums can be accessed here.

If you would like to know more about the Architecture

Architecture of caGrid 1.0

caGRID 0.5 Overview

Had to go through a very unconventional round of interviews with 4 top notch techie guys, surprisingly my work at college projects and my PPR course at PESIT came very handy! Sometimes when you’re being interviewed you can make out the difference between a real techie and someone who ‘poses’ off as a techie! A good interviewer always gets the best out of you and a bad one always makes you feel miserable .. I rem many times .. when I was made to feel the same and its so discouraging

Although I wont be working directly with National Cancer Research Institute, I still would be using caGrid infrastructure with one of their partners (a startup by former IITians based in Virginia) for one of the caGrid product suite along with their core SDK development group. I will be going to Virginia by month end, initially and Im pretty hopeful that I get to work from home later on (Boston beckons? You bet!!! I wanna be back to Boston living near MIT/Harvard …)

Ahh the last 3 weeks in Boston … that of a jobless soul in transition …

Btw if you know anyone who is extremely good in Core Java, OOAD and fundamentals of Programming on large scale enterprise applications with J2EE and open source technologies, my team is lookng for suitable candidates, do mail me your resume priyatam@gmail.com