by: Andy Brass
The pharmaceutical industry and the research councils have provided very clear signals that there is a significant skills shortage in bioinformatics and that this shortage should be addressed as a matter of high priority. As a response to this the UK academic community has worked hard to provide a wide variety of bioinformatics training in a range of institutes and at a range of levels. Specific details of all the Master's courses on offer within the UK are available at the CCP11 website. Details on the various research council schemes are available from the website of the respective council (BBSRC; MRC; EPSRC; Wellcome Trust). The number of postgraduate-trained bioinformatics students is therefore beginning to rise steeply.
This raises a number of issues:
- is there really a demand for postgraduate bionformaticians?
- if there is a shortage is this reflected by employers paying a premium for the skills?
- is the position likely to stay the same, at least for anyone currently contemplating entering training?
The experience we have had at the University of Manchester is that the situation for good postgraduate-trained bioinformatics students is very healthy. Companies are keen to take students for placements as part of their training. This is to the point at which we have more offers for placements than we have students to take them. As well as those in the UK and Europe, a number of companies in the USA are now offering placements. The job market is also strong. The majority of our students go directly into bioinformatics posts in industry, the rest going predominantly to PhD positions. Those who have tried to find work in the USA have found that the situation there is, if anything, better than in the UK, including one student who applied for eight jobs in the San Francisco area and was embarrassed to be offered all of them!
