The career prospects in Bioinformatics has been steadily increasing
with more and more use of information technology in the field of molecular
biology. Job prospects are in all sectors of biotechnology, pharmaceutical
and biomedical sciences, in research institutions, hospital and industry.
Some of the specific career areas that fall within the scope of bioinformatics
include Sequence assembly, Database design and maintenance, Sequence analysis,
Proteomics (study of protein, particularly their structures and functions),
Pharmacogenomics, Pharma-cology, Clinical pharmacologist, Informatics
developer; Computational chemist, Bio-analytics and Analytics etc.
The work involved in the specific career areas are Drug design utilising
3-D structure modelling and computational chemistry (Cheminformatics),
Comparing genetic data between and within species (Genomics), Genomic
analysis in an attempt to find drug targets (Pharmacogenomics), Characterisation
of proteins and their interactions (Proteomics), Prediction of the function
of genes and proteins based on sequence and structural data etc.
One can find work in Pharmaceutical and Biotech Companies where bioinformatics
technologies are applied throughout the drug discovery process. One can
also take up teaching jobs in public institutions if you have a skill
in teaching. Indian companies like Satyam, Wipro, TCS, Reliance etc and
companies such as Silicon Genetics, Accelrys and IBM Life Sciences Pubgene,
Tessella are recruiting bioinformatics candidates, because it has made
a substantial new market for IT infrastructure.
