Guide to Non-Traditional Careers in Science by Karen Y. Kreeger

Author:Karen Y. Kreeger [Kreeger, Karen Y.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Sociology, General
ISBN: 9781135894238
Google: 69dgbZMbbX0C
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2013-01-11T03:42:12+00:00

One-on-One with Bioinformatics Specialists

Maria Betty, Senior Scientist at Wyeth-Ayerst Research Inc., Princeton, NJ ( http://www.bioplanet.com )

Betty completed her Ph.D. in molecular biology at Oxford University in the United Kingdom in 1994. “By my final year there, I knew a career in academic research was not for me,” she recalls. “The constant pressure to write papers and grant applications, along with low salaries and long hours, were a sufficient deterrent. I applied for positions in industry and was offered a job at Wyeth Research (UK) working on postreceptor signaling in depression. Shortly after I started at Wyeth, the parent company announced its decision to close the UK research division. A small number of people were offered the opportunity to relocate to the United States. I took up this opportunity and migrated across the Atlantic Ocean.

“I had first begun to think of bioinformatics as a possible career alternative whilst working towards my doctorate. I was always the person in the group who people came to when they had problems on the computer, be it with a word processing or DNA analysis package. My Ph.D. on the molecular biology of the nicotinic acetylcholine receptor called for a considerable degree of sequence analysis. I quickly became the lab expert and realized I derive a great deal of satisfaction from messing around on computers. This, I think, is key to becoming a bioin-formatician: you have to like computers and be content to play around on them for hours on end, often producing what seems like very little.”

In her present job, she once collaborated with a research fellow at the National Center for Biotechnology Information who was doing some consulting work for Wyeth. “At this point I had already decided I wished to make the transition,” says Betty. “I signed up for UNIX courses, and started my own Web page to learn HTML and CGI programming. Working with the NCBI fellow, I learned some more sophisticated analysis techniques and received encouragement and advice on what skills I would need to become employable in bioinformatics.

“I came to realize that whilst I had gained a great deal of useful experience, I wasn’t acquiring the depth of knowledge necessary to give me a competitive edge over other molecular biologists wishing to make this transition. I decided to take the plunge and inform my manager of my desire to become a bioinformatician, and fortunately for me the gamble paid off. Management recognized the need for bioinformatics support within the department.” Betty currently works with the Wyeth bioinformatics group.

What general advice would you give a person thinking about embarking on a career in informatics?

The most emphatic advice I can give to someone wishing to make the transition from biology to bioinformatics is to get hands-on experience using the relevant computer programs and analyzing genes. Seek out opportunities at your workplace to work on bioinformatics- and genomics-related subjects, and to interact with others working in these fields. If you have just finished your degree, look for summer jobs or internships, even if the work seems mundane, such as checking automatic sequence data.

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