Job prospects for a Biology / Statistics Double Major?

BCEagle91
Fri, 27 Jul 2012 09:17:14 +0000

I do not know what the prospects for biostatistics majors are but you might consider bioinformatics or computational biology. I take it that you will be a sophomore this fall - have you spent any time looking at job postings yet? Are you working on finding internships at your school or in the Amherst area (UMass hosts a lot of REUs) for next summer?

You indicated that you were interested in genetics in another post - there is a growth-area in computer-based-analysis of genomes. An example of a use for this would be a pharma company testing a new drug that works on some people and not on others. They would get the genomes of the test subjects and run an analysis to look for markers on people the drug works for and doesn’t work for. They could then market the drug to those based on their genome. This stuff is in its infancy, partly because it takes so much computing horsepower to do analysis - but it should be a growing area as computing power improves and more efficient algorithms are developed.