Bioinformatics Graduate Schools? 14
coopergm asks: "I am an undergraduate nearing graduation, majoring in Biology and Mathematics & Statistics, with a bit of Computer Science as support. What graduate school (PhD) programs out there are the best for computational biology and bioinformatics? Obviously, Stanford, MIT, and Washington University in St. Louis have a serious edge by virtue of being associated with one of the major human and mouse Genome Sequencing Centers. How would one differentiate between these three? Are there other schools offering competitive bioinformatics programs in terms of reputation, quality of research and educational experience?"
Rochester Institute of Tech starting a program (Score:1)
Re:very few good options right now (UC Berkely goo (Score:1)
-c
very few good options right now (UC Berkely good) (Score:1)
I've been working in bioinformatics for 5+ years now and this topic is of extreme interest to me because I went straight from undergrad into a commercial biotech outfit. Generally speaking I'm very happy I did that and I honestly believe that I learned more by working in a real world discovery research environment than I could have in graduate school.
I've often considered going back to grad school but have always come to the conclusion that I am learning more by being in the real world. Getting paid to learn also does not hurt :)
Practically speaking you only need a phD level degree if you want to (a) be in academia or (b) manage your own group or lab someday or (c) apply for grants or teach in a university setting. For everything else the doctoral degree is (I think) pretty much a multi-year waste of time. My eventual goal is to go for the generalist approach -- multiple master's level degrees spanning computer science and molecular biology.
The best thing about industry is that I am judged only on my abilities and accomplishments. They don't give a darn about my academic pedigree and I don't have to deal with status-obsessed ivory tower types who look down on anyone without an advanced degree.
I live and work in the Boston/Cambridge area but if I had to pick any one school for graduate studies it would be UC Berkeley. They have by far the best mix of old school pioneers and young hotshot scientists/faculty. I would love the opportunity to work with people like Steven Brenner and Suzi Lewis. I have a disctinct feeling that over the next 5-10 years some amazing science is going to come out of the UCBerkeley folks.
The reason it is so hard to pick a grad school (or even undergrad for that matter) is that there was a period a few years ago where practically everyone who had done anything with bioinformatics was hired away from the unversities by the big pharma companies. There were whole departments that were essentially gutted by faculty leaving for industry positions. This left a HUGE hole for people looking to learn. This is slowly changing but has not been totally fixed. There are still lots of schools offerning computational biology or bioinformatics programs that only have 1 or 2 'real' faculty capable of mentoring and teaching well. UCBerkeley is (I think) the exception here.
Just my .02. Your experience/opinions may vary.
-c
Re:...and a question of my own. (Score:1)
=)
Boston Univ. (Score:1)
Re:WashU is a good bet, also others (Score:1)
OHSU (Score:1)
A plug for the Banana Slugs (UCSC) (Score:1)
And, by the way, the UCSC campus is about the most beautiful you will ever have the opportunity to go to. And it's only three miles from the Pacific Ocean and some of the world's most popular surfing. Visit and check it out.
Try UCSF and Columbia as well (Score:1)
Rennselaer (Score:1)
Cold Spring Harbor Lab (Score:2)
However, I'd recommend going to a school with a very strong CS curriculum. There are lots of people interested in bioinformatics right now, but unfortunately most think some perl or python will serve all their computing needs. It won't. The bioinformatics community needs more people with both biology knowledge _and_ a strong grounding in algorithms.
I'd say MIT certainly has the computing knowledge, and I know several CS profs at Wash U who were heavily into the genome when I was there. So one of those would be good. You'll be much better able to advance the woeful state of bioinformatics if you can help come up with better ways to store and search things, than if you spend your time writing slow and crappy cgi scripts [mcgill.ca].
Re:very few good options right now (UC Berkely goo (Score:2)
UC Davis? (Score:2)
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"They have strategic air commands, nuclear submarines, and John Wayne. We have this"
...and a question of my own. (Score:2)
Anybody know of any good Undergraduate programs that at least include actual bioinformatics in the curriculum?
I'm an interested, independent (read:I have to pay for everything myself) adult student, having recently returned to college. The community college I attend (American River College in the Sacramento, California area, if it matters) recently started up a biotech program, but they've yet to offer anything involving bioinformatics, and as my previous post mentioned, UC Davis only offers it as a graduate program...
(In a related but otherwise irrelevant note - it looks like the MPI port of fastDNAml is now available for download here [indiana.edu]. Time to play!)
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"They have strategic air commands, nuclear submarines, and John Wayne. We have this"