Being a SWE or MLE in my case, it seems like we're highly valued as executors on well understood problems.<p>I'm wondering if there is a way to become a part of something ground breaking like neurobiological research instead?
It's sometimes hard to find a place to participate if you only have a BS equivalent in computer science. Specifically with respect to neuro-biology, the people participating in research have masters or PhD's in biology. But... that doesn't mean you can't participate, but you would likely have to do a LOT of self-study.<p>I might recommend doing a survey of relevant academic journals. Bing or DuckDuckGo can help you find them. Many / most of the papers might use jargon you're unfamiliar with, so there's a lot of self-study involved. But the Wikipedia can point you towards citations that may help with that. And papers generally cite other papers. If you live next to a university library, that can help if you can't find a particular paper online.<p>At some point you're going to have enough "known unknowns" that you can start searching for videos and text books from classes. There are PLENTY of lectures on YouTube.<p>If you want to participate in research, talking to an existing researcher at the local university or at conferences works well. Though I think demonstrating your interest by having combed over the literature will help your case when talking to existing researchers.<p>As an undergraduate I was involved in building a scanning tunneling microscope just by hanging around in the optics lab at my local university (I mean... I was already taking classes and had permission to be in the lab. I didn't just crash the lab.) It's sort of amazing what you can get into just by showing up.<p>Though... fair warning... academia has a well-known habit of paying people subsistence wages (when they're paid at all.) And it's apparently easy to accidentally wander into toxic work-places. If you're used to a SWE salary, it might be hard to go back to living in a tent south of campus and eating ramen for every meal. But there's probably a happy medium somewhere that involves working a day job for cash and reading research papers at night.<p>My answer is: read papers. If you don't understand the paper, find a paper that explains it. Maybe find an online course that explains it. Network with people online and in person at conferences. Demonstrate that you know the materials in the most-cited papers.