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I'm in my first semester of phd in information science and

I want to work with bioinformatics professors.

As a stat major, what should I prepare for before contacting some of them?

I thought about completing some coursera courses in bio but will they count?

Roger V.
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070701
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    I know little of the subject, so not an answer, but you can take a look at our dedicated sister site: [bioinformatics.se], they might be able to give you a few pointers. Please take their tour and have a look at their help centre before posting to ensure that your query is on-topic. – Jiminy Cricket. Dec 16 '21 at 03:37
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    I suggest moving this question to Bioinformatics or Academia communities. – Roger V. Dec 16 '21 at 08:17
  • Welcome to Biology.SE. Please take the [tour] and then go through the [help] pages starting with [Ask] questions effectively on this site and delete or [edit] your question accordingly. In particular, please note that opinion based questions such as this are not appropriate — questions should be about biological processes or mechanisms and have factual answers. This is neither and thus is likely to keep accumulating down and close votes. – tyersome Dec 16 '21 at 23:27
  • Thank you Rogue and Roger. – 070701 Dec 17 '21 at 07:54
  • In addition to what I said above, you now seem to be crossposting this on Bioinformatics SE. Cross-posting is impolite and your post is off-topic for the same reasons there as it is here. – tyersome Dec 17 '21 at 18:55
  • People, you cannot on the one hand tell a new OP that something should be moved to another SE and then call them out for crossposting. That is toxic behaviour. Better just recommend to switch to a completely different community such as Reddit and Biostars where opinion-based answers are accepted and make a closing vote. – ATpoint Dec 18 '21 at 12:43
  • @ATpoint: There is no toxic behavior here only standards and the SE model in action. 1) The first user who suggested moving also said to check the help before posting — if the OP had done so they would have found that this post is off-topic here and there. 2) I never suggested moving this post (and would have mentioned not crossposting if I had) and directed the OP to appropriate resources for details about how to use this site, which they do not appear to have consulted. 3) If you wish to discuss this site and how it works then please use [meta]. – tyersome Dec 18 '21 at 21:10

1 Answers1

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Bioinformatics is still rather open to people with various backgrounds - biologists, mathematicians, statisticians, physicists, computer scientists. Solid base in math and/or software development is greatly appreciated.

The usual entry paths are:

  • Doing Masters in bioinformatics after having done previous studies in another field (usually biologists learn a bit of math and programming, while computer scientists learn a bit biology)
  • Doing a PhD in bioinformatics - this seems to be your case. So it may be a good thing to contact potential supervisors for doing a thesis in bioinformatics.
  • Doing a postdoc in bioinformatics (similar to the previous option, but later in the career and with less opportunities outside of the academia).

Remark: In English-speaking academia one more frequently talks about Computational biology rather than bioinformatics - it is a broader term, encompassing many useful areas of research (see this thread). It has however limited use outside of academia or in other languages.

Roger V.
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