There’s a ton of bio specific domain knowledge you’d need to pick up. I haven’t met too many self taught comp bio people I’d imagine it’s the same as the number of self taught computational mechanics people.
From my limited experience (this could def not generalize) the two fields are very different in industry. Comp mech tends to be very design or analysis oriented and hence project management heavy. Generally you already have a product and are trying to refine it in some way. There’s also usually commercially available tools to do advanced FEA. For the most part people aren’t writing their own programs anymore.
Whereas comp bio tends to be more like data science applied to bio so it’s more of a software offshoot where projects feel more like full product development cycles where in some cases people produce software along with a final product. So you also need great coding skills.
Finally most comp bio people have phds. I don’t know if it’s a requirement for a job but that’s what I have seen. This may be a barrier.
To jump straight in could be very hard. Tho there may be other paths for example bioinformatics to learn domain and software then jump into comp bio once you have a base.
There’s also the going back to school option to pick up domain knowledge + credential but I’m generally against it just because of opportunity cost.
Anyway take all this with a grain of salt cause my experience/ what I’ve seen may be way off.
Finally def check out some free comp bio classes. I think Stanford and Berkeley have freely available online materials.
Thank you for the info depth response. I am credentialed and experienced at picking up things across domains so I might kick it around a bit - as far as it dove tails with computational quantum mechanics at least.
Could be interesting to look at the interface between quantum and classical chemistry… …And look at the interface between molecular dynamics and continuum FEM.
It's probably about the same, it seems like the change is producing larger more robust plants which yield more. It doesn't seem like that should either the size of the rice grain itself or the nutrient content.
I don't think that's a safe assumption at all. In fact unless it's somehow increasing the rate of nutrient intake, doesn't that all but guarantee the nutrients are being used to make the base plant larger rather than going into the rice?
The abstract mentions how it leads to longer roots ("produced longer root systems"), which is probably the explanation for all the properties (it can extract water from deeper soil, and it can extract more nutrients from the soil).
My concern is how many generations of crops can one have in such a field before it needs artificial replenishing in the ways we do not do today (see my longer comment elsewhere on the thread :)).
>How easy is it to break into computational biology as a, say, practitioner of computational mechanics?
There are niches you can get into that are more computer/IT focused where you can start. Things like HPC management, software coding/upkeep for existing tools.
These jobs would like pay a lot less than corporate gig. To get into a true analyst role you'd need a few years of biology training. To start asking your own questions professionally you'd need several years of biology training.
Nothing stopping you from starting it as a hobby though!
From my limited experience (this could def not generalize) the two fields are very different in industry. Comp mech tends to be very design or analysis oriented and hence project management heavy. Generally you already have a product and are trying to refine it in some way. There’s also usually commercially available tools to do advanced FEA. For the most part people aren’t writing their own programs anymore.
Whereas comp bio tends to be more like data science applied to bio so it’s more of a software offshoot where projects feel more like full product development cycles where in some cases people produce software along with a final product. So you also need great coding skills.
Finally most comp bio people have phds. I don’t know if it’s a requirement for a job but that’s what I have seen. This may be a barrier.
To jump straight in could be very hard. Tho there may be other paths for example bioinformatics to learn domain and software then jump into comp bio once you have a base.
There’s also the going back to school option to pick up domain knowledge + credential but I’m generally against it just because of opportunity cost.
Anyway take all this with a grain of salt cause my experience/ what I’ve seen may be way off.
Finally def check out some free comp bio classes. I think Stanford and Berkeley have freely available online materials.