Does anyone have any advice for a computer science student seriously looking at the field of computational biology as a place for a career? I'd all but forgotten about biology until reading The Diamond Age right before seeing a video of ATP synthase in action [1].<p>Now, I know stuff like that doesn't have a lot to do with what is done in computational biology, but it did fire the imagination. I'm working my way through Algorithms on Strings, Trees, and Sequences - Computer Science and Computational Biology by Dan Gusfield [2], and have implemented (with tests) all of the algorithms encountered thus far in addition to some of the exercises [3]. So far, I really enjoy all the material.<p>Clearly reading a textbook is not enough to break into a field, but my degree is one in computer science and pure math with an internship in the HPC field. It's getting bit late to throw in a minor in biology or anything like that. However, all of my research-leaning friends in physics and such tell me that what everyone wants is someone who knows how to code, which is certainly something I know well. Is that similar to the situation in computational biology?<p>Any other advice or knowledge of what it's like to work in the field would also be greatly appreciated :)<p>[1] <a href="http://www.mrc-mbu.cam.ac.uk/node/448" rel="nofollow">http://www.mrc-mbu.cam.ac.uk/node/448</a><p>[2] <a href="http://books.google.ca/books/about/Algorithms_on_Strings_Trees_and_Sequence.html?id=Ofw5w1yuD8kC&redir_esc=y" rel="nofollow">http://books.google.ca/books/about/Algorithms_on_Strings_Tre...</a><p>[3] <a href="https://github.com/ahelwer/IvoryTower/tree/master/ASTS" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/ahelwer/IvoryTower/tree/master/ASTS</a>
What a great reference!<p>Having already started a company, I can say this is true and wish this list I'd had it before.
BUT, the majority of these "commandments" I already knew.<p>The important point missing here is that until you do it on your own (solo or with partners), you won't get that art & science part right: you'll just think it's luck.<p>(prior expertise in your field + management/leading experience certainly helps)