Need career advice : Bioinformatics and Neuroscience / Computational Neuroscience

[medalofhonour]

Hi Seqanswers community,

I am not sure if this is the correct forum to post this, but I think it might be close enough.

Due to lack of resources available online, I was needing advice from the community on how I should go about pursuing a career specifically in the Bioinformatics of Neuroscience / Computational Neuroscience.

Thanks to my current job requirements, I have been able to gain about 5 years of experience in analyzing NGS bioinformatics data from a diverse array of datatypes such as DNA-Seq (whole exome / whole genome / PCR targeted) , RNA-Seq (both single cell and cell population), Methyl-Seq (RRBS) and ChIP-Seq (histone modifications and transcription factor binding analysis).

Over time, I have specifically developed interest in pursuing neuroscience and the bioinformatics of neuroscience as my specialized career track.

I hold a Master's degree in Bioinformatics, and I was thinking if I should enroll in a school offering a PhD program with a particular focus on neuroscience. However, I was not able to find many schools offering such programs nor any resources with a comprehensive overview about this specialization. Maybe it's because computational neuroscience / neurobioinformatics is still a relatively newer track.

I am still in two minds over whether I should pursue a PhD for the same, or apply for let's say an analyst position in either academia / industry at some place offering such specialization.

I would highly appreciate if the experienced users of this community could guide me on this.

Thanks in advance.

[dpryan]

I went from neuroscience -> bioinformatics, so perhaps I can provide some insight.

As a general rule, if you're interested in pursuing a career as an analyst and can get a job with your current qualifications then the is very little reason to pursue a PhD. The only question then becomes whether you can get hired with a masters. You certainly might be able to, especially outside of academia.

If you end up wanting to do a PhD, just pick any decent neuroscience PhD program (you're unlikely to find a program explicitly specialized for bioinformatics/neuroscience). You're pretty much guaranteed that some of the groups will work on epigenetics in a neuroscience context, just read over the program's webpage and see what the various groups are doing. In the US, UCSF (where I went), MIT, Stanford and Harvard would all be good choices. I won't profess to being familiar with programs in the UK.

But really, if you don't absolutely need/want a Ph.D. then don't bother.

[christinehacker]

Hi,

Maybe the newly established research training group MeInBio here in Freiburg, Germany would be interesting for you. For example project A04 offers a PhD position in neurodevelopment NGS data analysis. you might want to check the homepage http://www.anatomie2.uni-freiburg.de...o_en/index.htm

regards, Christine