Research From Home [RFH]

RFH empowers women from Biology/Technology to start, restart or bridge their careers from anywhere in the world. Network groups from each domain are created by the company, and moulded & guided by experienced Industry professionals.Each member contribute flexible “modular” hours to supervised project s giving them their work-home balance.

Most educated women in South Asia are not able to pursue or are forced to give up their careers due to the inability to balance out both work and home even if they are passionate to work . As a result a vast pool of talent is left untapped thereby robbing a country of a large percentage of its human resources. RFH aims to bridge this gap by giving opportunities to the talented (mainly homemakers) who have a few hours to contribute for work in the field of scientific research. By contributing their best in the few hours(~3.5hrs/day as in Google work hours or 17.5 hrs a week) within a flexible time frame, maximum efficieny can be attained. A network of such women is created around the world that lets them form groups, and work on solutions on cloud platforms, thereby contributing to research from home. This is particularly possible in the case of biotechnology where solutions are arrived at using informatics(bioinformatics to be specific). Also in research a lot of papers have to be read that does not require physical presence in office. The team will be led by experienced professionals who guide them and oversee the work done. This untapped workforce in turn yields more results and findings that can be published online, thereby contribute to advancements in scientific research. Also, the modular hours put into mainstream Biology/Biotech projects undertaken by the Research Industry aggregate to significant (wo)man hours which can propel time-intensive fields like Cancer research.

This model isn’t restriced to Biological Research; it can be extended to other fields like IT involving research -communication & connectivity being the underlying backbone.

[An offshoot of this program is the A1B – Any One Biology- in which any dedicated person from a non-Biology background can contribute to research]

1.Women empowerment- Educated women are given a chance to work and contribute towards society which gives a them a sense of empowerment and independence

2.Work and home life balance- One of the biggest problems that force women to opt out of work is the inability to strike a work-home balance. By contributing their convenient available hours to work they can keep homes in harmony as well. Another advantage of RFH model is the time that is saved for extras such as traffic, breaks etc

3.Advancement in research-Research is accelerated by increasing the workforce and tapping hidden potential of the women involved.

1. Career start-Three biotechnology engineers were trained and mentored that helped them have a career 10 years after graduating

2. Career restart-A Bioinformatics postgraduate with prior industry experience was able to restart her career after a relocation after marriage that had rendered her jobless

3. Contribute to research from non biology background-An electronics engineer contributed towards biological research through GC’s A1B program

All showed great deal of passion towards work because they were once deprived the chance due to unavoidable circumstances related with family responsibilities. All of them expressed a sense of empowerment they never felt before.

Impact : More work force in terms of modular hours from the otherwise untapped stay-at-home resources. The chance to get absorbed into the Industry is presented that benefits both sides, mutually..

India produces 40,000 biotech graduates an year, with a sizeable female percentage as in other Sciences. [Source: http://www.thehindu.com/featur...] 

Benefit : Women.

Flexibility, safety, work-home balance, a sense of empowerment, independence are all factors that attract women towards RFH initiative. 

Deployment : Connectivity using the Internet and Internet based Applications - between remote team members, and the individual team member to the cloud resources. 

-Total No.of Hours gained from RFH resources measured roughly as 17.5hrs a week.

Apps to measure such work are available

- Imparted skills are gauged in phases by the Domain Team leads - Impact : Resources from the program have been able to work out the rough 3hrs of contribution to the company. Industry skills have been satisfactorily imparted

Direct count of the employees under RFH - Benefit : More number of women absorbed into the RFH program

No of users of Cloud Servers, Resource allocation like Server usage, bandwidth,

User number based conferencing and communication Application like Netmeeting. - Deployment : Internet based Connectivity & Use

Educated women remain unemployed because of restrictions related to being away from home. RFH program provides a platform for them to either start or restart their career from the safety and convenience of their homes thereby leading to the larger agenda of contributing collectively to research.

Tapping the unused potential of the women workforce in the country which is otherwise left neglected. This gives them a sense of empowerment , independence and fulfils their social obligation of contributing towards the country and achieving personal growth.

Our target is the scientific community. Often times there is a lag in research due to the bulk of data as well as shortage of human resources. By engaging the large women workforce available, both of above challenges are addressed to some extent. Most of the research based work will be available through the related databases.

The RFH initiative is quite unique.

We have been in touch with Academia like Cochin University, have active collaborations with Industry leaders in Sequencing and Personalised Genomics.

We are exploring options to acquire funds from the State and Central Government in India, and also 3rd party accelerators like InQ.

Lack of funds may deprive the ability to scale up.

Connectivity and Cloud resources are key to RFH.

We would have access to the uniqueness of the MIT and the collaborators who share a common interest in solving issue that directly affect human wellness. 

With Biology being the science of life, and GC being a Biology Company, a unified surge to solve the needs of this planet with the Human factor put front, exists.

And we can "Solve" them together! 

Cochin University

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