-: Getting a PhD is kind of the gateway
to getting into bioinformatics.
But it's more of a gateway
for doing independent research using bioinformatics.
Traditionally, they have not had a bioinformatics
college degree, but that's changing more
now that there's more data
and more, you know, tools and there's more room
to be specifically a bioinformatician.
Having said that, you can also get
into bioinformatics by doing programming,
and you don't need a PhD
to be a programmer or a software engineer.
That is a lot of on-the-job experience
and just gaining experience doing the programming.
Learning to become an expert
in a programming language can all be done
you know, without a PhD,
and then you can kind of get a job
in a field related to bioinformatics from there.
For a college students, I would say
find a lab that you find,
that does research that you find interesting
and spend a couple semesters just
being a lab helper there.
And most labs will
have spots for a couple undergrads
to do some work there
and just gain enough familiarity being able
to use a pipette and measure out reagents,
and just being familiar with the lab setting
is very helpful.
Keep current, read, you know,
read all the, read popular articles
about the science that you're interested in
and continue to learn and take classes.
And learning R is a great way to start programming
because R is kind of an easy language to learn.
I used to be a gamer, you know,
and I like gaming and I used to like gaming
so that taught me a lot
about the computer systems
and how computers work
and kind of how to troubleshoot computers.