I’m currently a Bachelor student of Biochemistry. I am really interested in programming and want to transition to bioinformatics. I would assume I need a MA degree. Anyone knows good universities in UK/London for Bioinf MA? And also, is academia the best option, or there are some companies that have nice Bioinf openings? For example, drug companies.
Instead of bioinformatics, please consider a masters in software engineering. It will be better bang for your buck and open many more doors. Source: working as a bioinformatics engineer in the clinical space for 8 years
Go do a master in software engineering instead . I have a master in Biomedical Engineering from Top 10 engineering programs and I am going back for online master in computer science . Way More rewarding .
What area did you specialize in in biomedical engineering/what are you working in now?
I do concur with the idea where developing SE skills is more important. To be honest I would much rather like to have a CS undergrad than a biomedical postdoc that have some superficial coding skills to be my colleague. I think this type of thinking is true for >60% of the bioinfo roles in the market.
All drug companies hire Bioinformaticians. Then there are companies developing technologies (Illumina, Adaptive, etc)/NGS based diagnostics. Lots of jobs. I don't know of any good schools in UK.
Yes, they hire Bioinformaticians for meager wages. The field is quite saturated and many that have been doing bioinformatics for 2 decades now, are looking to get out.
There are those who also going up the food chain to VP levels in large pharma. The trick is to be versatile not let yourself get pigeonholed. If all you learn/do is sequencing/normalization, you will have no career. But if you develop expertise in ML/stats along with knowledge of public databases, then you are golden.