Education and Career Forum

is their scope for bsc bioinformatics and msc bioinformatics.
as it is recently evolved i am in confusion about this scope

Bioinformatics is the combination of information technology and biotechnology. It is the most promising field for job hunters. It requires knowledge about computer programming languages as well as biology. This field helps us in new drug discovery.
It is a new field, but it has excellent career prospects.

The Scope

As geneticists, microbiologists and other researchers continue to gather huge amounts of new information about the human genome and biological molecules, there is a growing need for sophisticated, computerized approaches for compiling and analyzing that data. The process by which that is done is called bioinformatics. Every major university in the world is trying to get its share in this field.

There is a great scope for Bioinformatics in India. Companies have to work hard to gain respect and credibility. Bioinformatics hasn’t and cannot create a million jobs like IT as it is only a subset of IT. The numbers will increase but in small percentages.

"I wouldn’t advice everyone to jump into this field as it would only dilute the market with excess supply of professionals. On the other hand, it might be good for companies as it would give us enough people to choose from", said Ocimum’s Anuradha.

Another observation was that for a Bioinformatics company which hires 100 people, about 70 percent are people with core knowledge with some understanding of bioinformatics. The number of people with bioinformatics resumes have increased rapidly but the quality of these "professionals" hasn’t.

"Companies like us are always looking for good people but it takes us, on an average, 100 shortlisted resumes to finally pick one qualified person," she added

According to Rajendran, Sr. Executive - Business Development, BrainWave Bioinformatics Ltd, a lot of universities and institutes are into bioinformatics. Almost every university in Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka offer a diploma in Bioinformatics. The prominent ones are the University of Hyderabad, Osmania University, IICT, IIIT.

Many private institutions which started during the hype have shut down. There are very good universities like the University of Pune, Madurai Kamaraj, Bose Institute and Jawaharlal Nehru University. The IIT’s at Kharagpur and Delhi also have a very good biotechnology department.

A lot of IT companies like TCS and Infosys have ventured in to this area but most of them do not have very large teams. Many large companies and research institutions are hiring hundreds of bioinformatics professionals.

"Bioinformatics as a career is very lucrative and has a great future. Requirement from an individual is the ability to contribute either in life sciences or in IT when working in a team comprising of professionals from both fields. Typical qualifications would be Masters and Ph.D. The salaries are benchmarked against industry standards and would be comparable with any other industry including IT. The sector is growing at an impressive rate and companies which understand the ‘real issues’ of the industry will only survive in the long run. Working with such companies will result in overall development for professionals in this sector," says Sowmya Narayan of Strand Genomics.

According to Dr GPS Raghava, Scientist & Co-ordinator of Bioinformatics Centre, Institute of Microbial Technology, Chandigarh, there is a big gap between the demand and expertise available. The gap is not only in India but in the US also. Despite the hype and the presence of large number of bioinformatics training centers in India our contribution is too limited.

Other useful areas

Bioinformatics is today seen as primarily applied to speeding up new drug discovery. But the other area that assumes increasingly higher significance is the application of IT to the entire life sciences sector- for the same purpose it is done in other industrial sectors- improving efficiency, reducing costs, wider access, etc. For example bio-diversity data management is an area that requires application of the best database design techniques and planning for data warehousing and data-mining. Knowledge management as applied to corporations will also become relevant in the scientific context to ensure that Indian scientists get relevant and timely information related to their research to help them network and collaborate to create new intellectual property.

"There may be around 200-300 employed in this sector every year. There are a lot of private institutions getting into the foray, but then quality is indeterminate," said Rajiv Vasudevan, who is an expert both in IT and biotechnology.

Bioinformatics in India is at an early stage of development. But at 4 to 5 centers in the country, one sees mature understanding of the needs of this sector and world class development of tools and applications. These centers will ensure that India’s traditional strengths in IT are leveraged to place us on par with the developed countries.

does it have entrance examination?

i want to b.sc bio informatics but i have unknown this brach

what are the subjects in bio informatics?

i am a student of B.S.C bioinformatics .is there any gate exam in this field to persue higher study in this sector?