I'm putting together some slides for a presentation and was wondering how many bioinformaticians there are in American per lab group, per institute. I'm based in the UK and I have the perception which may be wrong, that groups in American are recognizing the importance of bioinformatics to productivity better than we are currently and moving away from a central system of a bioinformatics services department to a specialized/integrated bioinformatician for each groups research activities. I have the impression that this system is more suited however not the norm. Has anyone got any figures on how many bioinformaticians there are in America in relation to biologists, also in the UK? maybe in academia vs industry. I may just have to leave this out but would be a good statistic if anyone has any links to this kind of information.
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rob234king
1 answer
It is very difficult to get a clear read on the number of bioinformaticians as often this job description does not actually exist. I remember frustrations at our institution where we could not post a bioinformatician position because the HR management software did not have this job description in the dropdown menu. It had to be called "computational scientist".
Another complication arises from jobs that are bioinformatics related but are not directly related to performing directly bioinformatics analysis: software development, systems administration etc.
I would estimate that at Penn State there are perhaps between 20 to 40 positions requiring substantial bioinformatics expertise - none of which are labeled as "bioinformatician".
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Istvan Albert
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It's funny - I'm based in the US and basically have the impression that it's much easier to find work in Europe in bioinformatics. Anecdotally, my experience is that industry is on the forefront of embracing bioinformatics, but it's not normal to have a bioinformatician on staff in wetlabs here.
I doubt there's a comprehensive data set on this. You could do a survey. Anecdotally, my 500ish person (Stowers) institute has 6 people in the "core" and maybe 9-10 "embedded" analysts in labs, though many of them are interns.
Sounds like maybe Europe isn't as bad as I thought then. Our institute has 800 people approx, 2 on software projects and 3 dedicated to research themes i.e. willow, wheat, insect research (more collaboration than service but do end up acting as help desk sometimes), and 1 galaxy infrastructure (service). Seems like a bioinformatician would pay for themselves in terms of added impact and productivity within most groups but I suppose that will take some time to catch on. Maybe a good time to say we do have a position open if search Rothamsted research.