Seeking help in writing research proposal for Ph.D. degree in Bioinformatics

Question

[unknown_52]

Hello to the Good people. This is my very first post here. I'm an MS student and currently searching for opportunities to start my Ph.D. degree. I'm from computer science backgrounding and possess very little knowledge of Bioinformatics. However, recently one professor asked me for a research proposal. I've been reading several journals as well as tutorials to get the basic ideas and research area of Bioinformatics. It's very difficult to generate a research proposal in a short time while having very little background in a field of interest. I need to know which areas are trending in research to move further in Bioinformatics. Also, it'll be highly appreciated if I get some links on getting the basic ideas of Bioinformatics.

TIA

[German.M.Demidov]

that's an unusual request; I'd start from here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioinformatics

Answer 1

[dsull]

Bioinformatics is very broad. This is almost like asking "what's the basic ideas of computer science?", a field which encompasses many sub-disciplines (programming languages, theory, security, artificial intelligence, systems, graphics, quantum computing, etc.) -- there's no way I'd know whether you're more interested in writing proofs on NP-complete problems or training AI models.

Think about what YOU want to do and what question YOU want to answer. What excites you?

Do want to design new accurate & efficient algorithms for analyzing sequencing data? Do you want to use deep learning to accurately classify disease vs. non-disease states based off images, x-rays, and other clinical data? Do you want to integrate existing "omics" data to figure out novel biological insights (e.g. what makes genomic changes give rise to or are associated with this disease?)

Look at the webpages of a few labs and see what those labs are working on.

[unknown_52]

Thanks a lot for your valuable response. I got the point and will follow it also

[Kevin Blighe]

Hey dsull, you should consider posting some of your responses as answers and not just comments - they are very well written. I have moved this to an answer.