What is Bioinformatics?

Bioinformatics is an up-and-coming academic subject and research area that combines modern information sciences (informatics, mathematics, and statistics) with the life sciences (biology, chemistry, pharmacy, medicine, biotechnology, and food technology). Bioinformatics deals with questions of informatics that arise with the application of new technologies and a rapidly growing quantity of data in the life sciences. The discipline is also of continuously increasing significance in medicine and drug discovery namely to understand the molecular biological processes Bioinformatics develops and utilizes methods and techniques from computer science and mathematics in order to solve tasks from biology, chemistry, or medicine

Bioinformatics solves the following problems and put more emphasis on understanding the disease related problems at molecular level:

• Protein sequencing, Nucleic acid sequencing and their analysis.
• Find protein interaction, activity, modification and function.
• Elucidation of function of a molecule based on its structure.
• Understanding ecological patterns of interactions and behavior.
• Gene expression, analysis, prediction and establishing genomic library.
• Find homology for studying evolutionary relationship among different species.
• Molecular modeling and molecular dynamics methods to study structure from sequence.
• Drug designing and discovery from data of functional genomics and proteomics.
• Designing algorithms to solve aforementioned biological problems

The core competencies that is projected to be gained by prospective students include:

• data analysis, software development, project support, and computational infrastructure support in biological contexts (such as next generation sequencing, medical research, regulatory genomics, and systems biology)
• analysis and management of data as a member of an interdisciplinary research team composed of members from disciplines that span the biological, medical, computational, and mathematical sciences
• modeling, building, and warehousing biological data; using and/or building ontologies; and retrieving, manipulating, and managing data from public data repositories
• ability to manage, interpret, and analyze large data sets; broad knowledge of bioinformatics analysis methodologies; familiarity with functional genetic and genomic data; and expertise in common bioinformatics software packages and algorithms
• apply statistics in contexts such as molecular biology, genomics, and population genetics; relevant statistical and mathematical modeling methods, including descriptive and inferential statistics, probability theory, differential equations and parameter estimation, graph theory, epidemiological data analysis, and programming and analysis of next generation sequencing data using software such as R and Bioconductor
• apply software engineering methodologies to successfully design, implement, and maintain systems and software in scientific environments
• becomes proficient in the use of one or more scripting languages (such as Perl, Python, Java, C, C++, C#, .NET, and Ruby), database management languages (e.g., Oracle, PostgreSQL, and MySQL), and scientific and statistical analysis software (such as R, S-plus, MATLAB, and Mathematica)
• utilize web authoring tools, web-based user interface implementation technologies, and version control and build tools (e.g., subversion, Ant, and Netbeans)
• possess detailed knowledge of molecular biology, genomics, genetics, cell biology, biochemistry, and evolutionary theory
• develop managerial and programmatic skills, such as staff management and business development; understanding of or experience with grant funding and/or access to finance; awareness of research and development (R&D) and innovation policy and government drivers

Professional opportunities:

Various job profiles exist for bachelors in bioinformatics, all building the connection between life science and IT experts. On the one hand they may work in pharmacy, chemical, plant or food industry or in biotech companies, but on the other hand they may be employed in software companies producing the pharmaceutical software for experts in biology, medicine or chemistry. Hospitals now also need bioinformatics bachelors in pathology and diagnosis labs or for clinical studies. The scope of duties of bachelors in bioinformatics is manifold, e.g. they may be experts in databases, simulations, data mining, or in algorithm design