Slashdot Mirror
Career Choices for Computational Biologists?
wengkius writes "I'm entering grad school this year and will be working towards a higher degree in Computational Biology. While my undergraduate training has been in computer science, I'm looking to apply what I've learned in a new area that has piqued my interest. Now my question is this: apart from the obvious career choices that I have thought of (academic research, pharma corporations, biotech startups), are there any other career options that I have yet to consider? Would be great to hear from Slashdotters who are familiar with the field."
My advice -- be familiar with the tools and techniques, and pick a fun and collaborative project. Whether computational chemistry (my field) or biology, the tools that you use can and will be applied elsewhere. Being familiar with measures of similarity (Tanimoto similarity, for instance), has implications to multiple fields, as does multivariate modeling (PLS, SVMs, K-nearest-neighbor models, etc). I know several grads who 'jumped ship' to market analysis/market prediction (think brokerages and Wall Street). The point is, you become an expert in your field, and have the offers come to you.
Cheers,
-Mike
If a man's character is to be abused there's nobody like a relative to do the business. -Thackeray, William