3 ms·

That's not a lot of bioinformatics programs that I'm seeing. A lot of bachelors programs seem to focus on teaching almost exclusively the basics of BLAST and al

That's not a lot of bioinformatics programs that I'm seeing. A lot of bachelors programs seem to focus on teaching almost exclusively the basics of BLAST and all it's boring related algorithms (basically everything in this Coursera course[0]) and their mathematical foundations. Master's programs sometimes are a bit better with a hint of ML, but ultimately most people I've encountered there are still awfully unequipped to tackle ML problems and transfer the advances from mainstream ML to biology/biochemistry problems. [0]: https://www.coursera.org/specializations/bioinformatics https://www.coursera.org/specializations/bioinformatics

asdff 6y ago
Any bioinformatics program covers machine learning these days. They might not have an explicit class called 'machine learning,' but you can bet it will be covered in the lecture sequence and the cutting edge of the field will be discussed in journal clubs, rather than in lectures which are about established fundamentals. For a pure biology undergrad who is probably med school bound, learning ML is superfluous so you don't see it in the curriculum at the undergrad level, unless there are specific concentrations offered for computational biology. A bioinformatics program may even just have you take these ML classes from the statistics or CSE department rather than offer some bioinformatics-specific section within their department.
- orange3xchicken 6y ago
  I agree with this, and this was true historically as well - e.g. Biometrika - a premier journal in statistics - grew out of bioinformatics-like research. Much of the groundwork laid for online learning & statistics/bandit algorithms/modern reinforcement learning was produced by biostatisticians working on techniques for efficient experiment design (e.g. Thompson Sampling during the 1930s in Biometrika).

asdff 6y ago

Any bioinformatics program covers machine learning these days. They might not have an explicit class called 'machine learning,' but you can bet it will be covered in the lecture sequence and the cutting edge of the field will be discussed in journal clubs, rather than in lectures which are about established fundamentals. For a pure biology undergrad who is probably med school bound, learning ML is superfluous so you don't see it in the curriculum at the undergrad level, unless there are specific concentrations offered for computational biology. A bioinformatics program may even just have you take these ML classes from the statistics or CSE department rather than offer some bioinformatics-specific section within their department.

orange3xchicken 6y ago
I agree with this, and this was true historically as well - e.g. Biometrika - a premier journal in statistics - grew out of bioinformatics-like research. Much of the groundwork laid for online learning & statistics/bandit algorithms/modern reinforcement learning was produced by biostatisticians working on techniques for efficient experiment design (e.g. Thompson Sampling during the 1930s in Biometrika).