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Bioinformatics FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) - Overview
This resource is maintained by and © Damian Counsell, UK Medical Research Council Rosalind Franklin Centre
for Genomic Research (the RFCGR) 1998-2004.
Jump to the table of contents of the whole FAQ.
Latest changes
- added info about Brazilian bioinformatics
training/sequencing---thanks to Pablo Nehab-Hess
- added Wageningen University---thanks to Judith Risse
- added Malaysian courses---thanks to Alfred Simbun
- added up-to-date link for Minnesota University---thanks to
Lynda Ellis
- added two Indian courses---thanks to Sugandha Singhal
- added another definition of bioinformatics---thanks to
Sugandha Singhal
- added another New York State programme in
bioinformatics---thanks to Bulat K
$Revision: 1.211 $ $Date: 2005/07/19 16:47:58 $
Introduction
Mail
your questions to me, Damian Counsell,
and I'll try to bring you answers. Alternatively, if you have your
own answers, mail them to me and I'll incorporate them. The practical
section in particular is full of gaps so your contributions to
that are particularly welcome; I am slowly completing and extending
the entries when I have the time.
Although I am happy to tackle questions of general
interest to all visitors to the site, please note that:
- I cannot answer queries specific to you alone,
- I am not a careers adviser,
- I try not to offer opinions on the relative merits of
bioinformatics courses,
- I won't answer your essay questions, assignments, or
homework,
- I won't provide you with a list of companies for you to
market your bioinformatics product to,
- I won't suggest a project for your Master's/PhD,
- I have not devised a bioinformatic cure for
cancer---and neither have you, and
- This FAQ is perpetually under construction.
I
hope, however, that the information here helps with your studies,
career and work.
I acknowledge
the help of many other individuals in creating this part of the
Bioinformatics.Org site. If you have contributed and I have
forgotten to credit you, please email
me and I will correct my oversight immediately.
Bioinformatics is, I believe, a special kind of engineering
discipline---it certainly isn't a "pure" science. It has been
enormously successful in its short existence and I
think its successes have been the result of a practical and rigorous
approach which I hope to encourage in anyone interested in entering
the field.
This document is not a scientific paper or textbook (yet). You
will find blunt
opinions here. If you disagree with me about any of the
following please tell
me. I hope to learn a lot from your inevitable and welcome
criticisms.
There is certainly one sense in which I consider myself a pure
scientist: I'm open to rational persuasion.
I write this resource and hold the copyright for the purposes of
protecting its content from intellectual property pirates. By that I
mean I want to keep this out of the hands of people who steal the
work of others for commercial gain, and those who abuse and extend
the powers of IP law at the expense of the disadvantaged---rather
than those who would like to copy or mirror this resource for
educational reasons. (This may sound overdramatic, but the FAQ has
already been pirated
for doubtful purposes.)
Overview
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