Career Outlook

Enormous volume of data has been generataed and will be generated in the post genomic era through research including genomics, proteomics, structural biology and dynamics of macromolecular assemblies. All these information will be help better understanding of biology and of disease and an improved ability to design targeted drugs. But manipulation and interpretation of these data demand a lot of skilled personnel

The need for bioinformatician to make use of these data is well known among the industrialists and academicaians in the area. Demand of these trained and skilled personnel, which has opened up a new carrier option as bioinformaticians, is high in academic institution and in the bioindustries. This demand will clearly become exacerbated with advances in genomics and post genomic research. This skill gap is highly visible around the world.

The carrier in bioinformatics is divided into two parts-developing software and using it. Most of the bioinformatics companies mostly prefer persons from physics, maths or computer science background rather than biologists-turned programmers. Otherwise, it will create isolated groups that have little interaction with molecular biologists and biochemists which will ultimately fail to achieve promise of better understanding of biology and diseases can be restored.

The solution is to the problem of either by identify science and biology, which will be difficult or to create inerdisciplinary teams, which is much more realsitic approach. The other way to tackle this imbalance is to include training in bioinformatics in all undergraduate biology courses.

People working in this field must have knowledge in more than one field-molecualr biology, mathematics, statistics and computer science and some elements of machine learning.

Graduate Employment Opportunities:

There is a growing need nationally and internationally for bioinformticians, specially graduates with a good grounding in computer science and software engineering, and an appreciation of the biological aspects of the problems to be solved. The activities of such individuals will include working closely with bioinformticians with a background in the biological and biophysical/biochemical science to:

• elucidate requirements
• develop new algoritnms
• implement computer programs and tools for bio data analysis and display of results
• design databases for bio data
• participate in data analysis

Such individuals will gain employment in national and private research centres such as the European Bioinformatics Institue (EBI) at Hinxton Cambridge, and the European Media Lab, academic institutions (eg. the Laboratory for Molecular Biology (LMB) in Cambridge) as well as in pharmaceutical companies (both multinational, for example GlaxoWellcome, smithkline, Astro Zencia, Roche etc, and small but influential companies, for example InPharmatica).

Furthermore, there is a growing demand for graduates with software engineering and distributed systems skills to develop and maintain the powerful and sophisticated computer systems that support research, development and production activites in bioinformtics. There is a heavy use of internet and intranet technology within the sector in order to manage the storage, analysis and retrieval of biodata whose attributes are

• large volume
• rapidly increase in volume
• high complexity