Carrier in Bioinformatics
Gajendra P.S. Raghava
Friday, 08 February 2008 17:59 UTC
In past there is lot of hype about bioinformatics. This is the reason in last 5 years, we have many universities in India which are offering degree/diplomas (M.Sc., B.Sc., B.Tech, etc. ) in bioinformatics. Interestingly most of universities do not have trained bioinformaticians still they are able to attract lots of students. Probable students are comparing bioinformatics with information technology and jumping in this field. We are also getting news that students are facing problem in finding the jobs. I have little knowledge about scope of bioinformaticians in industry but I know there is lot of scope in research or academics. I wants to know others view on “Carriers in Bioinformatics” particularly industry and problems faced by bioinformatics students.
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Dear Jai
Thanks for giving insight about scope for bioinformatics companies and reasons of up and downs of bioinformatics companies.I have another query about scope of bioinformaticians in teaching. as far as my understanding most of the persons who did bioinformatics course have been absorbed in teaching. The question is whether peoples involved in teaching private college are happy. A number of colleges have started B.Tech, are these B.tech in bioinformatics are getting appropriate jobs like B.Tech in IT. -
I wld like to comment on few of Dr. Raghva’s statements.
>> “Most of bioinformaticians are in category of users; they have knowledge of bioinformatics software and how to use them.”
I do not completely agree here. Scientific reserach has much customized requirement as far as computation is concerned. A bioinformatician can only survive if he/she has command over atleast one computer language/script. Do one need to mention that a user should necessarily know how to inter-convert distinct file formats and that is infeasible if user does not know coding.
>>"Where as most of academic institutes need other category of persons called developers."
I do not agree here too. Hard core developers wld not have any interest in science. They can only be recruited as “developers” on higer salaries. Exceptional techie guys interested in science wld not like to go into hardcore development, wld rather like data analysis and theoretical modelling kind of stuffs.
>>"For making carrier in bioinformatics one need to have capability of develping better method than existing methods. I mean knowledge of programming, machine learning techniques, unix adiminstration and understanding of biological problem."
Well, yes and no! developing better method/algorithm is one field in bioinformatics. That too is more of technology than research. Solving a scientific problem or unraveling uncharted territories with the help of computation is Bioinformatics/Computational Biology reserach in true sense. Ofcourse, the definition differs for industries. For them, anything profittable with the help of computers is Bionformatics. I know many of my collegues doing manual QC work in industries with the name of bioinformatics.
These are my personal opinions.
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Hi Raghava,
Let me first say about the current Bioinformatics teaching standards.
Except for few places the teaching is too much under standard. Most of the teaching places focuses on Informatics part. People in the field thinks that if they know biology and they learn IT, they know Bioinformatics. What about the heart of bioinformatics i.e. algorithms, mathematical models? If you say dy/dx, most of the bio-informatics students and there teachers will run away. Leave that many of them wont know what sigma means. These people will again become teachers in colleges, so you can expect the standard of teaching.
I think the name of Bioinformatics should be changed to computational biology or Mathematical Biology. At-least the word computational/Mathematics will scare many of the Biologist before they join. Most of the students joining bioinformatics are from biology background, and many of them had opted for biology at 10+2, because they were weak in mathematics.
About the job opportunity:
Academics+Teaching can only absorb 10-20% of the students. Thats true with every field. The real job absorber is the industry and right now there are very few and to me it does not seems that it will grow unless the Biotechnology industry in India grows. Why engineering/medical and IT are considered so good from job point, because the majority of the students are absorbed by the industry. For the students who want to come in Bioinformatics, my advise would be to join only if you feel that they have a strong hold on mathematics and study bioinformatics from a very good place. Otherwise you are wasting your time and money and your future.And never ever compare IT job market to Bioinformatics. There might be more than 1000 IT companies and probably there are only a dozen good Bioinformatics company in India and they too keep more IT guys than the Bioinformaticians.
Bioinformatics scope would be close to that of most of the basic sciences. i.e one can get job if they are good.Jai
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I agree with Dr. Raghava that most of the trained bioinformatician are being absorbed in teaching. Well, the reason is lack of consideration as a PhD student in national labs. Not to go far, I myself a example here. I was in a CSIR lab at project associate position, I was not allowed to sit in PhD entrance since I dint had CSIR-NET qualification, though had 6 publications with 3-6 Impact factor.Instead, ppl with no computer background are being considered as PhD in bioinformatics! On the other hand, people abroad are happy to offer me PhD, while others end up as lectureres in colleges. The damage is self induced by the system. Youngsters knee down if not given worth oppurtunities in research. That is my experience.
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Hi Kuljeet,
You are right. After by ADB from Pune Univ, I though of doing PhD and then I realized that I need CSIR net. Since my masters was in Agriculture, there was no way I can clear NET in Life Sc.
So the end conclusion is that a good biologist can do PhD in Bioinformatics. People good in algorithms and computers have to find something else.
Indian system is designed to loose good people to foreign universities or industry.
Jai -
Hi Raghava,
I have one question for you.
Why in India most of the Bioinformatics research is focused on Protein modeling, docking etc and to some extend on gene finding.
What about the other areas such as Microarrays, SNPs, Genetical Genomics, Genetic Networks, Systems Biology, Transcriptional Factor, Literature mining, Epigenetics, Pathways analysis etc.
Or am I completely wrong?
Jai
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Dear Jai, I agree with your observation that most of bioinformatics groups in India are around “Protein Modelling”. It have number of reasons that includes history, expertise etc. We are strong in protein structure from long time. Prof G N Ramachandran and his colleagues were very strong in protein modelling (e.g. Ramachandran Plot), Prof M Viajayan and his team establish strong group in X-ray crystallography. In my view IISc and certain extend Madras university were strong hub for learning about protein structure. Students trained at IISc spread all over the India. Most of crystallographers and persons having good knowledge of protein structure jump in to bioinformatics. Its easy for a crystallographers to work in the field of protein modelling because they have depth knowledge of protein structure. Here, we need to note that most of the group are strong in protein modelling or analysis of protein structure but note in protein structure prediction. This is the reason no group (except our group) successful participate in competitions like CASP , CAFASP (Olympics of protein structure prediction). Most of the indian bioinformaticians directly or indirectly have their root at IISc. This is the reason that most of groups are around protein modeling. Its easy to work in the same area in which we are trained. Learning new field after a certain age is difficult and challenging.
In Indian few bioinformatics groups also grow without any relation with IISc. For example at IGIB Prof Brahamchari initiate number of bioinformatics programmes, where they work on different aspects of bioinformatics like SNP, metabolic pathways, gene prediction, repeats etc. Prof Kolaskar (though he trained at IISc under prof Ramachandran) also works in number of areas of bioinformatics. I start my group based on computational techniques where we are using computer as a tool for solving biology. As one can see our group is contributing in number of areas i) vaccine informatics; ii) protein structure prediction; iii) annotation of genomes; iv) Subcellular localization methods etc. In india by tradition we prefer to work in one or two area due to two reasons i) its difficult to learn a new area; ii) if you are working in more areas than your seniors thought that you are not serious. These are my personal views based on my experience.
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Dear Kuljit, I fully agree with your view about PhD in bioinformatics. I have similar experiences. Two biophysics students joined my group as project assistant. Both were excellent in developing bioinformatics tools in area of protein structure prediction and published excellent papers. Despite excellent publication records we can not register them for PhD till they qualify CSIR net. I think rigidity is major problem in government organizations. If you have published good papers than you may get PhD or good job any where in the world except in India. Here we need to qualify traditional exams like CSIR-NET where syllabus have been set long time back and support tradition subjects. If I am correct modern subjects like bioinformatics are not part of syllabus of CSIR net. In this situation some time you have disadvantage if you are not doing your masters in traditional subjects. This the reason bioinformatics groups are unable to get PhD students trained in bioinformatics. In CSIR project assistant is not allowed to register for PhD. In my view performance of project assistant will increase significantly they are allowed to do their PhD if they are publishing good papers. We need more flexibility in system.
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In all these talks about “bioinformatics”,where does a b.tech student lies?I myself ,being one ,am not able to understand which way to go?What about the higher studies perspective?I chose this field because i am interested in biology as well as computers ..But the matter of fact is that the institutes in India are not even providing the basic knowledge of the field.If there won’t be any basic knowledge then how can we think of the higher perspective which needs planning in the initial stage of our bachelor’s degree?
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Hi Raghava!
Nice to see one of our scientists bothering to take note of the condition of bioinformatics students in India. I think there is a lot of confusion regarding this field, I mean very few are clear about what they expect to become after studying bioinformatics. This situation can be attributed to the lack of guidance, and its a fact that Indian students choose subjects according to the hype around it, rather than the market realities. The fact is that there are a very few jobs in the industry, and then as Jai rightly said that the Indian academic system is such that it is designed to loose good people. Having said that, I would also like to add that the jobs in bioinformatics are steadily increasing since I am constantly getting updates about my colleagues getting landed into nice jobs in bioinformatics. I personally feel that India has got a lot of potential to excel in this field, and with time, it will do. For this we need to have a clear action plan made by best of people form both induatry and academia, about what kind of manpower we are going to need, and what should the students be taught so as we dont face this manpower crunch on one side, and unemployment on the other. Along with this, there should be proper channels of information and support for the budding enterprenaurs and foreign investment, beacuse at the end of the day, the success of any industry depends on these people. We should understand that it wont be very wise to expect each and every student learning bioinformatics going into the research. So its the industry which holds the future. The skepticism is understandable because of the lack of jobs and limited growth opportunities right now in bioinformatics, but it would be a shame if we let this opportunity pass by just because of temporary skepticism. I thank Raghava for raising this issue and listening to the students.
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