Jobs of the Future Part 2

In my on going series of post about jobs of the future, I have looked into my crystal ball to ponder other emerging career paths of the future. For all you newly credentialed college grads here are some more careers you may need to focus your future studies on.

Quantum Biologist/Bioinfomatics Scientist

Though relatively established as an academic and career track, these fields are still emerging and will only prove more important as advances in medicine continue. In 10-15 years they will enviably merge. At the molecular level and below more and more research is discovering quantum effects. There are many courses offered already across many institutions dealing in the area of Quantum Biology. Our depth of knowledge will continue to require data collection on these biological effects and the computational and analytical capacity to model them. With the advent of quantum computers , with their inherit ability to simulate the world at the quantum mechanical level, a quantum biologist needs the skill set to build these simulations and make sense of them. Quantum Information Scientist will build these quirky tools and Quantum Biologist will utilize these tools to delve deeper into nature and discover new things. Areas of study required: Quantum physics, thermal dynamics, quantum and classical computer science, applied mathematics, statistics, biochemistry, chemistry,biophysics, molecular biology, genetics, ecology, evolution and anatomy. Basically a you’ll need to be Pre-Med student with bachelors degrees in both computer science and theoretical physics. Good Luck.

Current positions available:

    Computational Biologist – Cofactor Genomics Bioinformatics – St. Louis, MO
    Postdoctoral Fellowship – Computational Biology/Bioinformatics-NIH – Raleigh-Durham, NC

Who will hire you?

    – Governments
    – Hospitals
    – Pharmaceutical Companies
    – Agricultural Businesses
    – Universities

Next up, what are the course loads going to look like with these future career paths? Stay tuned.

Jobs of the Future

As we approach yet another graduation season (and I explore the uselessness of my college degree), I have looked into my crystal ball to ponder the jobs of the future. For all you newly credentialed college grads here are some careers your kids (and you will have kids) many need to focus their future studies on.

Quantum Information Scientist –  An emerging information science discipline that studies and builds systems that utilize quantum effects in physics, information theory and computation. It includes theoretical issues in computational models as well as more experimental topics in quantum physics including what can and cannot be done with quantum information. This can apply to all manners scientific disciplines such as biology, systems complexity science and general information processing. One would need to be versed in large array of disciplines such as physics, statistics, computer science, math and other forms of information theory. As microprocessors and other computational components get smaller, the laws of conventional physics don’t apply and quantum effects start to take place. The next realm in computer science will be at the quantum level in both hardware and software.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_information_science
http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2000/nsf00101/nsf00101.htm#preface

Who will hire you?

  • Government Defense & Intelligence
  • Computer Hardware companies
  • Universities

Synthetic Biologist – an emerging area of biological research that combines biological sciences, computer science, chemistry and engineering.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_biology
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computational_biomodeling

Who will hire you?

  • Drug companies
  • Hospitals
  • Agricultural Businesses
  • Chemical Companies
  • Universities

Data Scientist – A person who can extract information from large datasets and then present something of use to an organization. The skills needed for this vary, but a computer science background would help as well as being strong in math (particularly statistics). A background in graphic design would complement these skills if extracted data needs to take a more visual form.

http://flowingdata.com/2009/06/04/rise-of-the-data-scientist/
http://benfry.com/phd/

Who will hire you?

  • Governments (particularly Defense & Intelligence)
  • Banks
  • Internet Companies
  • Hospitals
  • Retail
  • Agricultural Businesses
  • Universities
  • Logistics & Transportation Companies

 

Google I/O 2011, My Thoughts

I was pretty stoked about Google I/O and all and all it was pretty good. However, I can’t help but feel left a bit empty. This year Google punted on social and maybe that’s a good thing. I for one was getting sick and tired of weekly columns about Google impeding demised because of a lack of a coherent “Social” strategy. Even if that is the case there were some noticeable absentees. No Buzz love. On the other hand there were announcements of note. Here are my brief Twitter-like burbs on them.

Google Music – Timid release, but necessary to get into the game. Sucks that there is no method of purchasing songs. Coming soon I hope?

Android – Its march to world domination is assured. Ice Cream Sandwich can’t come quick enough to unify and clean up its fragmentation mess.

Android Open Accessory API – Novel idea in theory just like Open Social, Open ID, Open handset Alliance. Lot of good those did. However, it could still be cool.

Android@Home – Meh.

Chrome – Solidified its “Bad-Ass” status as the HTML5 Browser of the future.

Chrome OS – At first Meh. Now not so much. It could be game-changing.

With all this going on it made me a bit reminiscent for last year’s Google I/O when there were Google Wave sessions and fireside chats happening. Some one was good enough to do a Wave for some of this years sessions. Check it out.