My day job is a good one, but there are times I long to pour my programming efforts into something that benefits science at large.
Something more than simply letting BOINC fold proteins and munge SETI data during my spare cycles.
Is anyone doing this now? Are there any projects on which I could get involved?
One of the most satisfying feelings I ever had was to learn that the lead scientist on a project I had once worked won a Nobel Prize for his work on that project. (The Nobel being what it is, this was over fifteen years after I had moved on and also several years after that science had been done. Mind you, there were literally hundreds of programmers involved and any competent programmer could have done what I did, but it was nice to know I had contributed.) So, I can certainly understand where you're coming from.
You don't say where you're working now, but if you're not currently working on a science project, why don't you get a job on one? You may have to brush up your science background, but if it's what you're interested in, go for it!
You don't say where you live. In the U.S., at least, there are plenty of opportunities to get science related programming jobs:
- In the Washington, D.C. area there are a lot of federal government agencies which do scientific research in a variety of fields. A few of these are: the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST), the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). In my experience, it's fairly difficult to actually get a government position; however, there are lots of companies with contracts to these agencies to provide support, including programming and other IT work.
- In other areas of the U.S. there are still opportunities in at least some of the above (and other) federal agencies as many of them have operations centers in other areas of the country. Perhaps best known is that NASA has 11 major centers in 9 different states (and D.C.) and operations at smaller facilities in other states as well.
- As has been mentioned in other answers, universities are a resource for science-related programming jobs also. Many of these have grants of some sort which fund the research.
- I'm not familiar with the situation in other countries, but I'd expect the situation to be at least somewhat similar in other "major industrialized nations".