Summer Academic courses for Bioinformatics major in future

Pre-College Topics Summer Programs
1

Hello,

My son is a rising senior who would like to pursue a career in Bioinformatics. He has taken Java Programming (10th), AP Comp Science (11th), AP Biology (11th) courses so far and is going to do 2 internship programs this summer–

2 weeks Neuroscience research program
7 weeks Cell Biology/Drug Development/Cancer research program

His school does not offer any comp science related subject in the senior year. His 7 week Cell Biology program is not a 5-day/week, 8 hr/day program and thus he has some time during that period to take some comp science related courses in the community college.

With Java and AP Comp Science, my son has a good foundation, so my question is what additional courses in comp science he should take in community college that will be useful to him for a career in Bioinformatics?

2

I would look at the website for the community college’s Computer Science department to see what their normal course progression is and where in that progression they would place someone who has passed AP Comp Science. One possibility might be a Data Structures course, which will be something he’ll certainly need in Bioinformatics.

If the schedule for a class doesn’t work with his other activities, he might look at some online activities to learn more programming. For example, he could look at the training problems for USACO, which would teach him more about algorithms.

3

Thanks Ynotgo for all the information.