I don’t remember exactly when the idea for benchpro first came to me. It must have been sometime around 2016.
I don’t remember the day, but I remember the conversation.
My wife was a scientist at the time. Her research grant had recently come to an end, and she didn’t know whether she would be awarded another. We were anxious about what might come next. We talked about it almost every day, trying to understand our options and what the next few months might look like.
At one point, she expressed her frustration at having dedicated so much time and effort to a career that could suddenly stall—or perhaps even end.
As a software developer, my immediate reaction was:
“Wait a minute. You’re good at your job. Why would science discard a good professional? Surely other people can find you through GitHub…”
Except, of course, not GitHub.
“What do scientists have that’s like GitHub for developers?” I asked.
The answer was… not convincing, to say the least.
Scientists had publications, institutional pages, CVs and professional profiles. But there was no obvious place where someone could see what a researcher could actually do - supported by evidence and validated by the people who had worked alongside them.
The question lodged itself in the back of my mind: Why wasn’t there something like GitHub for scientists?
Not a place to host code - the work we were talking about happened primarily in the lab—but somewhere a scientist could tell the world what she was good at. Something a prospective employer could look at and think, “That’s interesting. Let me get in touch.” After all, that kind of discoverability is commonplace in software engineering.
It would take me years to act on the idea. It became a pet project that I would occasionally return to, asking life sciences researchers for feedback whenever I had the opportunity. It took longer still for me to start taking it seriously - and eventually to take the leap that turned it into benchpro.
benchpro.ai exists because there are researchers who are very good at their jobs but struggle to demonstrate it. Researchers who are reduced to CVs, publication lists and job titles, even though evidence of their expertise already exists in their work—and the people who worked alongside them can validate it. Researchers who have invested years in becoming capable but cannot easily carry that credibility with them.
I hope benchpro proves useful to them. I hope it helps researchers find their next opportunity, helps organisations find the right people and, perhaps, helps science retain talent it might otherwise lose or overlook.
Nearly ten years after that first conversation, benchpro is finally making its way into the world.
Let the adventure begin. I’m thrilled.
This post has been written by a human, to humans.