I work in an well-funded well-published evolutionary biology / computer science / mathematical biology lab as an undergrad, and here's the deal.
Computational Biology is 90% data gathering and 10% analysis. You can imagine what your work will entail. I can almost guaranty that you will be using Perl to manipulate large datasets in preparation to give them to someone else higher in the lab. If you're really really lucky you might get to use some R functions as a drill.
Day 1, you will feel like a huge idiot. Especially since you're from HS, and absolutely no one expects you to know otherwise. DO NOT attempt to bullshit - you won't be put on the spot, and inevitably you will look stupid if you try.
To make your life easier (i don't know if you're coming from Java or something).. familiarize yourself with these things in this order:
1) Perl (bread and butter)
2) R (multiple regressions, MCMC, etc)
3) C (simulations)
4) awk (quick and dirty)
5) vim (master this)
ANNDDD one last thing that will save you from mistakes.
EVERYONE in Comp bio knows how to program. Don't go into your lab acting like a l337 hackz0r. You're doing the programming because nobody else has time to do it.
Cheers, and good luck.
"Normal" people need pretty GUI interfaces that are intuitive. I really really want to raise my sickle/crescent and bring free software to everyone -
but that isn't going to happen. I convinced a cheapskate friend of mine that didn't want to buy windows to use ubuntu - and to ditch Office 2007. Ubuntu is about as close as it comes to being doughy end-user friendly, but he when he wanted to set up two monitors with his ATI card, a process that would normally have taken him 2-3 GUI clicks, I had to come and help him - turns out ATI doesn't make a GUI interface for ubuntu - and had to manually edit source files and change settings in terminal.
As long as terminal is required, look forward to Windows 7.
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I work in an well-funded well-published evolutionary biology / computer science / mathematical biology lab as an undergrad, and here's the deal. Computational Biology is 90% data gathering and 10% analysis. You can imagine what your work will entail. I can almost guaranty that you will be using Perl to manipulate large datasets in preparation to give them to someone else higher in the lab. If you're really really lucky you might get to use some R functions as a drill. Day 1, you will feel like a huge idiot. Especially since you're from HS, and absolutely no one expects you to know otherwise. DO NOT attempt to bullshit - you won't be put on the spot, and inevitably you will look stupid if you try. To make your life easier (i don't know if you're coming from Java or something).. familiarize yourself with these things in this order: 1) Perl (bread and butter) 2) R (multiple regressions, MCMC, etc) 3) C (simulations) 4) awk (quick and dirty) 5) vim (master this) ANNDDD one last thing that will save you from mistakes. EVERYONE in Comp bio knows how to program. Don't go into your lab acting like a l337 hackz0r. You're doing the programming because nobody else has time to do it. Cheers, and good luck.
"Normal" people need pretty GUI interfaces that are intuitive. I really really want to raise my sickle/crescent and bring free software to everyone - but that isn't going to happen. I convinced a cheapskate friend of mine that didn't want to buy windows to use ubuntu - and to ditch Office 2007. Ubuntu is about as close as it comes to being doughy end-user friendly, but he when he wanted to set up two monitors with his ATI card, a process that would normally have taken him 2-3 GUI clicks, I had to come and help him - turns out ATI doesn't make a GUI interface for ubuntu - and had to manually edit source files and change settings in terminal. As long as terminal is required, look forward to Windows 7.