@wowzers, bioinformatics is a technical field, so any progress is easy to measure. I believe that I have learnt a lot to work in my field and that I am good for a postdoc position. My fear is that transition from PhD level to postdoc will be difficult when it comes to some positions. Someone else gave me a tip to tell about the difficulties in job applications. That might help.

@HazyJane, you are spot on. I am looking for a technical role in the future. I am in Western Europe, but I do not want to reveal the country (too small - everyone knows everyone else here).

I have been trying to change direction, but it was too late to change when I realized that the second stage could not be done. I tried several diffirent ways to solve the first stage, but I could not overcome some technical barriers.

I am involved in a field called bioinformatics. The goal is to increase our knowledge of biology (DNA, proteins, RNA, genes, etc) using tools of IT, maths and statistics. So computers and software algoriths are tools, but biology is the goal. I got a PhD position a couple of years and am now writing up my thesis and will soon start applying for postdoc positions.

My research comes in two stages. In the first stage, I was supposed to write a computer program to process data and obtain certain information for biological. This information is intermediate and not particularly useful on its own. This is the mainly computer science and required before doing the second stage. I managed to write the computer program well, but the data it generated was bad. Not because I did any mistake but because the raw data available was not good enough (it is a technical limitation over which I have no influence).

Now, I cannot do the second stage which is to increase our knowledge of biology and I have not published any papers to do with the second stage. My supervisor says that I will not be able to obtain a PhD degree due to this, but I might get a masters title instead.

I fear that this will make it impossible for me to get a postdoc position because many postdoc ads stress that you need to have published papers in high-ranking journals.

There are a couple of good things though. 1. I coauthored paper that has been cited a couple of times (it shows that I am a good programmer). 2. There is 1-2 papers that I might be able to publish and is to do with algorithms, but not something that increases knowledge of biology. 3. Bioinformatics programmers are in demand.

I wonder if I can still apply to postdoc positions. Any advice is helpful.