Biology Courses

IamtheWalrus

Hi all

I was wondering if any of you who are qualified in biology could tell me my best path into a career in biology.

I currently hold an M.Sc. in Computing and would like to take a biology course next year in the hope of working in that field. Do you think I would have to start from scratch and do a B.Sc. and possibly post-graduate study afterwards or would by M.Sc. count for anything?

Is it possible to do a PhD in Biology with no life sciences background? Would I be mad to even consider it?

Any help is welcome.

Thanks,
Walrus

invaderjim

With a background in computing you probably could do a PhD in Bioinformatics, although you might need to do a taught masters in the field to get you caught up first.

Some of the work includes: computational evolutionary biology, genome annotation, gene regulation, mutation analysis (bacteria and cancers), modelling interactions, the list goes on.

It would depend on the supervisor but I know of a few people taken on with computer and engineering backgrounds taken on for bioinformatic PhD's. It would be a steep learning curve on the biological side but then people with a more biological background have the same problem with the computer end of things.

It's becoming a really big area at the moment as sequencing becomes cheaper and cheaper. People with strong computing backgrounds are used to put genomes together and annotate them.

If you wanted to get into a more of a 'wet lab' situation I would imagine that you would need to do do a BSc, but not too sure.

Best of luck if you go ahead with the career change!

IamtheWalrus

Thanks alot for your reply invaderJim. The bioinformatics is an idea.. Could be interesting.

I would like to do work on animals. I might contact a university and see what they have to say. Wonder would that work.

Improbable

If you're interested in a PhD program, you're probably better off contacting he individual PI's rather than the universities. I know its definitely possible as the group that I worked with had at least 3 computer science graduates working in a lab that dealt with computer models on predictions of protein folding. They were all brought up to scratch with regards to the stuff that they needed to know, which wasn't as much as us doing an actual biochemistry degree.

IamtheWalrus

Improbable wrote: »

If you're interested in a PhD program, you're probably better off contacting he individual PI's rather than the universities. I know its definitely possible as the group that I worked with had at least 3 computer science graduates working in a lab that dealt with computer models on predictions of protein folding. They were all brought up to scratch with regards to the stuff that they needed to know, which wasn't as much as us doing an actual biochemistry degree.

Thanks Improbable. What are PIs though? I would like to get away from the tech part of it but staying down the tech path may be my only route into biology.

Improbable

PI is short for principal investigator. Basically the person who is in charge of the research group. I doubt you'd need to do a BSc from scratch. An MSc in computing should be enough to get you into an MSc in biology, rather than doing a BSc. After that, getting into a PhD program shouldn't be too difficult as long as you do well.