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I am interested in doing something with biology and computers, and biotechnology nomenally seems to satisfy these requirements.

But I have no idea what it is. Does anyone know?

I am a high school rising senior considering career options.

By Serene (Serene) on Monday, June 30, 2003 - 07:41 pm: Edit

*_*

all that stuff you hear about dna, cloning, stem cell, proteins, vaccination, etc in the news is biotech.

as far as i know computer is used to help scientists do calculations (yes there is math in bio.)

By Ariesathena (Ariesathena) on Tuesday, July 01, 2003 - 12:08 am: Edit

Serene lists some great examples. As a chemical engineer (who is currently doing biotech research), I might be able to explain a little more fully. While some of it does involve math and computers, mostly there is a good deal of small-scale lab work: cloning, making drugs, using biology to make new products. Most of biotech is done on the bench scale or pilot scale (making grams or so a day), but you might be interested in the scale-up processes.

Though I'm more of a materials scientist in practice, I have some nominal experience in biotech. One project involved biomimetic materials, that is, examining characteristics of organisms which are desirable (i.e. chitin strength), and replicating the structure using other materials to achieve a similar result. One of the more well-known projects is spider silk: as its strength to weight ratio is much higher than that of steel, engineers are attempting to replicate it. Some people have injected spider DNA into goats so that the goats will produce silk in their udders. Other companies are working on other methods to either artificially produce it or recover it from cocoons.

You could attempt to (bravely) major in biotechnology, chemical engineering, biomedical engineering, or biological engineering and computer sciences/computer engineering. From there, you could use either background to for jobs. If possible, talk to people who are in the biotech field and see what they do, what they think, and how they like their jobs.
Good luck!

By Techieguy (Techieguy) on Wednesday, July 02, 2003 - 03:54 am: Edit

Thanks for the info.

Just wondering, you would never have to program anything in C++/Java, etc?

When I hear Biotech, I think of the Marine Biology Case Study for the AP Comp Sci Exams. It involves simulation of fish and you can change the program to do different things. Guess I was wrong.

On a minor note, how is the pay?

By Brd (Brd) on Wednesday, July 02, 2003 - 11:04 pm: Edit

If you are interested in biology but definitely want to utilize computers directly and often, you might look towards biophysics. Biophysics is a somewhat "hot" field these days, and in addition to experimental work there is (as always these days in physics) a fair amount of simulation done as well.

As for biology and mathematics, that is also a somewhat hot field, although it is much newer and smaller. Unlike, say, physics which has a centuries old tradition of employing mathematics in its service, biology is just recently beginning to look seriously towards mathematics. If you wanted to go into this, your best avenue might be through mathematics, where several notable mathematicians are working actively at applying analysis to biological systems (The NSF medal of science winner Dr. Karen Uhlenbeck comes to mind).

As an aside most scientific programming is done in Fortran, C, and in some circles, C++. Java is generally nowhere to be found in scientific endeavors.