Courses in Bioinformatics

I completed the MRes in Bioinformatics at Newcastle University in 2005 and was offered my current position by my MRes project supervisor. I would certainly recommend this course for undergraduates who are interested in this field. However, I would like to advise applicants on a few things:

• Apply as early as possible as they have studentships available but they are limited.
• If you are a from a biology/life science background I highly recommend you take a short course in Java programming and/or work through some online tutorials. I can’t stress enough how beneficial this will be. Follow this link for one I recommend.
• If you are from a computing science/non-life science background I recommend you read through some basic texts on molecular biology before the course commences.
• For an overview of bioinformatics for people starting out in the field, this is a great place to start 2Can Bioinformatics at the EBI.

From that year there was about 22 of us on the course. I’m pretty sure more than 50% are now studying PhDs in bioinformatics or systems biology and the majority of the remaining (including myself) are in full time employment either in Industry or research.