Forum:Bioinformatics Career plans and developments

Question

[juncheng]

Dear folks,

I'm going to start my PhD soon. As the starting point of my career (I consider), I would like to discuss about the careers of bioinformaticians.

In a long term, to prepare for a career in industry or academia, what are the most important skills a bioinformatician need to be trained during PhD life.

Of course, individual development depends a lot on personal interests. Personally, I'm interested in work as a scientist in pharmaceutical industry. Is that important for a person like me to train my self working as much as with medical data, or general skills are more important? What kind of skills are most needed in industry and academia from bioinformaticians?

I appreciate any kind of comments and discussions.

Answer 1

[Mohamed]

First, you should define are you from biology or computer science. Also, you should mention, do you like wet lab or in silico. Regarding pharmacy, you need to master wide skills (which actually the same for any subject but might be needed more in pharmacy). These include regarding molecular interactions, protein-ligand, protein-protein, protein-dan interactions, 3D protein structure and modeling, simulations programs, NMR, X-ray crystallography. Also, pharmacogenomics is now popular. You see any discipline is now overlapping with others. The main point and very critical step is publications. I repeat it again now, you need good quality publications. I mean by good quality both the impact factor of the journal and the reputation of the place that you are coming from. You need publications in academia (all of the time) and in industry (at the entry of it). Also, you should show ability to write good projects. Good luck. I hope you get more focused comment.

Mohamed

[juncheng]

Thanks a lot for commenting, I have a bachelor of bioengineering, and master bioinformatics special.

I always heard from somebody says industry companies does not consider publications as that important as in academia, I'm not sure whether this is because they lack of good publications or the truth is like this. From the point of you, it seams publications rank the first place in both cases.

[lh3]

When you are in a company, you rarely need to write papers, but to enter industry, you will need publications unless you can convincingly demonstrate your skills by other means.