<p>Hello all,
I was looking into some subfields of computer science when I came across an article about bioinformatics. It seemed REALLY interesting to me, but I have some questions about the subfield.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Is s CS major good preparation for a career in bioinformatics?</p></li>
<li><p>Does one need a Ph.D to find a job in bioinformatics, or will a MS suffice?</p></li>
<li><p>Is this a growing field, or just a tempoarary hot field that will fizzle out in ten years?</p></li>
</ol>
<p>I appreciate any answers I can get.</p>
<p>I recently sat down with a biology professor who was telling me I should get into that field (I’m in CS). I myself won’t as I’m not interested in biology but he was telling me that every major study in bio has a computer scientist on their team to help run their data, and that biologists need more helpful programs. Have you ever worked with BLAST (Basic local alignment tool)? Take a look at it and see if it interests you (in the sense of how the software was made). It compares DNA nucleotide/protein sequences of different species to find evolutionary relationships and from there construct a phylogenetic tree. Using BLAST as an example, as a computer scientist you should be good with databases, statistics and algorithmic development. You also need a good working knowledge of Biology. To answer your first question: yes, if you’re in the right program. Some CS programs have a tract in bioinformatics. Otherwise you should you minor in biology and do independent projects in bioinformatics. There are offers for jobs at the Masters level and the doctorate level, the latter is more research-oriented so you decide. And absolutely yes it is a growing field, biology and its use in society is growing with the help of computers and the work of computer scientists. Make sure you like biology and computer science as you should have working knowledge in both.</p>