Bioinformatics at RIT | Why I Chose My Major

The following is an computer-generated summary of the video transcript.

I'm a second year bond dramatic student from our I. T. Now, most of you guys probably don't know what that is. I didn't even know myself until halfway through senior year so I just want to explain more about it and why I picked the major, it sounds complicated. What is bioinformatics? Well bioinformatics is just the combination of computer science and biotech. That's what I realized in the later on in my senior year. Actually, after applied to all my colleges, I applied to all my colleges of the computer science major but I still felt like something was missing. Um I wanted to apply that programming skills to something else. I knew I didn't want to be a biology major or just a biotech major. That's when my teacher actually recommended me to buy informatics and she told me how it's a new and upcoming field in biotech. It's one of its come in because of the large influxes of information that have been coming in through scientific research. Scientists have realized that you need a computer aspect to it to be able to sort through that information. So I was like that's what you're doing some research after that. What colleges are there that have by informatics as an undergrad degree. I found actually not many and it was really surprising but I found out that most colleges have it as a master's degree not an undergrad degree. Then I found that one of the colleges that I applied to our I. T. Had an established bioinformatics undergrad degree with the masters program. So once I got into our I. T. I. Immediately switched to bio informatics and I've been happy here what I love most about it actually said sometimes it feels like a dual major and there's equal emphasis on both the computer science and the biology aspects. So while I'm taking classes like high throughput sequencing algorithms and data bases classes like that I'm also taking classes like genomics, biochemistry and even advanced immunology. So its in depth its in depth knowledge in both fields. That's why I found actually our I. T. Does the best. I have other friends that do bioinformatics and other colleges. I've noticed that well they do classes like physics that are not exactly needed for our major. I'm I'm delving right into the programming right into the biology aspects and I found that's the most what I really loved about bioinformatics as well was that there is such a vast number of career choices that you could go towards. So for example, if you really love the computer science aspect of it, but not so much the biotechnology aspect of it, you can go completely into the computer science field or you could do a career choice where it's more focused on the programming side. If you really love the biology and biotech aspect of it, you could go completely into biotech research and do you have a little bit of that computer science aspect as well, but you'd be more focused in the biotech field. That's something that I really found valuable in picking a major because it's really hard to feel completely constricted to one career when you're doing one major, but in here there's a lot of different opportunities. So it's really up now here's the thing the bioinformatics program is extremely small. It's the smallest major in the entire college of science. Um I've noticed that professors and students are extremely close with each other. You have some some of the same professors throughout your years in the major. I find that that's really nice and there's so many different research opportunities. I found two for us and because nearly every type of research project needs a bioinformatics element to it in order to sort through data or even do lab work and biotech work. So I found that it's actually really nice to have a small major. I have some of my closest friends in the major and it's just really nice it's just friends going through everything all in all. I really love the bioinformatics major and especially the one given at our I. T. Because they did such a great job of really combining both the computer science elements in biotech elements as I explained before. Also I love that they have a four plus one program. Um It basically means that you do four years of undergrad plus one year of a master's degree and in a major such as bio informatics. Getting a master's degree is extremely important in the career force and so I love that they offer it and it really gives you a head start into going into um the workforce and overall the environment. The students are also super welcoming and I just love the environment and how friendly it is. I mean if you're interested in biotech and computer science, go for it. You don't have to sacrifice either of them, and you really gain a really in depth knowledge of both computer science and biotech. Thank you so much for joining my, um, thank you so much for joining my campus real and I hope you stay tuned for more videos.