Hey. I'm currently in my senior year at my high school and I'm going to college soon. I still haven't decided what do I want to study. What I really want to dedicate my life to is curing aging, cancer and other stuff. My top pick is still Biomedical engineering. It seems to have everything I might need on my path.
I might miss something. I'm still young and very inexperienced. My parents and I moved to US couple years ago. I have do more background research to be on the same page with others here,because I started learning English 3 years ago.
I'd be very grateful if you share your experience and thoughts. :)
You more than likely would like to go to Medical school right? A doctor who works with cancer is an oncologist (if that is what you mean when you say working with cancer). To get into Medical school, you can have any major you want as long as you take all of said Medical Schools pre requisites
Aging and cancer is such a HUGE area that there are a variety of things you can major in that would lead to a career fighting that.
-You could, indeed, go to medical school and become an oncologist. Then you could major in whatever you want as long as you are pre-med.
-You could major in a natural science like biology, biochemistry or chemistry and get a PhD in some natural science field and do biomedical research on aging and cancer. (One option for that is to go into pharmaceutical research and create drugs and treatments for these conditions.)
-You could major in BME and come up with devices to help those who are aging or have cancer. (A major in mechanical or a variety of other engineering fields could lead to this, too, as you could get a master’s in BME later or you could enter a BME job with a mechanical, electrical, or other engineering major).
-You could major in psychology or neuroscience, get a PhD in one of those areas, and do research on how people psychologically deal with aging/cancer, or what happens in the brain when you age/have cancer.
-You could major in nursing and make aging or cancer your specialty area. You could also get a master’s and/or a PhD in nursing and do research on providing nursing care to the elderly or those with cancer (or other stuff), including treatments.
-You could major in physics and become a medical physicist. Medical physicists are licensed medical professionals who use nuclear medicine and imaging to diagnose and treat illnesses, primarily in oncology.
-You could major in computer science and use your CS degree to design programs to help physicians diagnose and treat cancer, or help the elderly, or whatever.
-You could major in math or statistics, and become a biostatistician who supports research studies on aging and cancer, or help design computational/mathematical/statistical models for research in those areas.
There are even further afield ideas - you could get a philosophy degree and go into bioethics around treatments for cancer or aging, or sociology and study the sociological dimensions of aging…those won’t help you cure aging and cancer and other stuff, though. Typically, math/statistics and the sciences are your good bet for that.
Google ‘physician scientist’.
I worked at a medical school in the neurology department. The docs there were doing research on many things including Alzheimer’s. There were nurses and other personnel helping them. I helped with grant proposals for example. There is a lot you can do as a physician and in support roles!!
In brief, I would say some combination of anthropology, philosophy, chemistry and math.