thoughts on math-bio & training

I have been thinking about science training quite a lot lately, particularly with regards to mathematical biology and taking the MD/PhD route. This is of particular interest because I have a computational biology colleague also on the same track and our program will hopefully take in another one or two next year.

It's been interesting to watch my friend, who comes from a straight math undergraduate background, morph as he's made his way through medical school, to the point where he's actually going to do a pure biology lab rotation this summer. In some ways I have an almost intense envy of his background and what he's able to do from a mathematical and computational standpoint; it'll take me years, if ever, to build a toolbox of skills to do what he can do off the starting line. Combine that with the overview of questions in biology and he probably will be able to do stuff that I can't do (and likely have no desire to either). He basically wants to do his thesis and graduate via the fastest route - and probably can.

On the other hand, I have a longer familiarity with biology and haven't really acquired the skills I want in math and computation to tackle the questions I'm interested in. Two years of research experience has made me appreciate the importance of picking the right question, however.

Some things I would look for in a project:

• a senior scientist with established questions and quantitative data set
• high-impact question(s) that can be formulated in a concrete way
  
• ability to experimentally test predictions
• interest and some familiarity with quantitative science
• mathematician who has interest and ability to adapt math to biological / experimental needs

And last but critically important: good people to work with, that you would want to work with. It matters an awful lot.

The way of thinking about problems from a computational or mathematical standpoint is dramatically different than experimental. Often I've found that the initial major challenge from a quantitative standpoint is just figuring out what to do next. Yet from my admittedly very limited experimental experience, it often seems that the roadblock is not thinking of what to do next. In many cases it seems conceptually simple - but the actual doing is extremely difficult and sometimes impossible, and often for unclear reasons. When things go slowly on a math-bio project, it is often simply because I'm the limiting factor; my brain doesn't know what to do next, or can't do it, or can't think through the problem. When things go slowly experimentally, it seems to me that it's often because one has to wait for things to grow (cells, mice, bacteria, etc.) or because weird random experimental things go wrong (like the floor of the entire building being contaminated with a fungus or something strange like that). In my research experience, I've seen that it's rare for something external to me the limiting factor, unless it's a huge computation.

I think a major reason I was drawn to math biology was simply because I found I enjoyed the process of thinking through problems, even if I didn't always come up with a result. I also enjoy coding, and though I don't have any particular expertise with it, it's something that can be addictive in itself (though sometimes it can be extremely frustrating and annoying). I also appreciate the fact that it's unlikely that I will cut, burn, poison, infect, or otherwise injure myself or others during research, unless I manage to electrocute myself in the process of plugging a computer in. Lastly, I like the freedom of being able to think about a problem anywhere in the world, without spending thousands and thousands of dollars on experimental reagents.

Of course experimental science is crucial. And I also must say I'm not really interested in developing algorithms or methods per se, but in biology itself and answering biological, not computational or mathematical, questions. It's just that in choosing this approach to science, I get to enjoy the journey, get a larger perspective on biology, and even get paid to do so.

And when I think about it, it really is pretty crazy that I get paid to ask questions and learn stuff as my job! Even crazier that my career for the next... um... really long amount of time... is basically to go to school and learn a bunch of cool things about how human beings (might) work, learn cool math stuff, figure out interesting questions to ask, and then run around trying to answer them. It's easy to get jaded about this all but really - how many people get to do this for a living?

What a privilege.