DC is taking Biotech as an elective this year (Junior). This is the first class they have been excited about. I don’t really know which part they enjoy the most, but they talk about this class more than others.
I know nothing about science fields. In my googling, it seems that biotech is a narrow major that not too many schools offer. What are some more broad related majors? I assume to some extent it will depend on what part of the biotech class appeals the most, but dc hasn’t narrowed that down for me beyond research and lab work. At this point dc is NOT interested in medical school.
I know this is pretty vague, but I’d appreciate any guidance! Thanks
Biotech is a pretty big tent that accommodates a variety of Biomedical Sciences related majors. Examples could be chemistry, biochemistry, biology, physiology, statistics, health…I could go on and that’s just bachelors level degrees. Most students interested in biotech or related careers will do a PhD (5 years) and postdoctoral work (3-5) years. Hope this helps!
One daughter is working in biotech. She was a biology major, I think with a focus on cell biology. During her sophomore year due to a change in major (she started off with a different major) she needed to take four lab courses at once, and discovered that she really liked lab work. The result was that she got a lot of lab experience, including doing quite a bit of lab work for cancer research as an undergraduate student. All of her lab experience helped her get a job after graduation.
As @1dadinNC has said, there are a lot of different majors that can result in a biotech job. My daughter’s coworkers for example mostly have degrees in biology, chemistry, or biochemistry. Most of them have some graduate degree. My daughter is thinking now about what she wants to study in graduate school, and whether to go for a master’s degree or PhD, or maybe both.
I am not sure how solid funding is for biotech research. My daughter’s current project appears to be somewhat shaky in this respect. Getting continued funding is likely to be dependent upon getting some good results. However, I am not sure that this is all that different from what I experience over my career working in high tech. Certainly there were a lot of high tech companies that went away over the past 40 years.
Gosh – I would have thought that biotech funding was secure. I’m surprised and disappointed to learn that it is not.
How about computational biology? Do you think that field is going to be well-funded in either academia or industry (genentech, pharmaceutical companies, etc?)
Computational biology is a niche field. There are very few people that can do it well in the US. I’d say less than 100, maybe far less.
Job prospects – there is a demand but IMO, not super high because companies do not hire a lot of computational people. There are exceptions, take a look at DE Shaw. But those outfits are very picky.
The trend right now is towards gene therapy, tissue engineering, protein engineering. The last one requires quite a bit of computational acumen.
Hope this helps! Feel free to ask specific questions.
Computational Biology requires an undergrad in CS and a PhD in Computational Biology from a CS department, with high math prereqs. It is niche as has been pointed above, but probably not as niche as to have only a 100 jobs in the field.