the good old days...

my innate passion

After 2.5 years as a national 'slave', I took up Biochemistry as my major in university. Sad to say, the method of assessment centred yuckily heavily on regurgitation and rote memory. Sigh, even at the university level. What a disappointment! While lamenting on the lack of opportunities to think at the university level, I came across the word "bioinformatics". Somehow, I had this gut feeling that it is a nascent field worth exploring. Indeed, this field is such a godsend to me since it is the wondeful marriage of molecular biology and computer science. Things just cannot suit me any better.

At the end of the first year in university, I was intensively researching for more information on bioinformatics. I am amazed that I was almost excited by everything I read or heard about this field. I thought to myself, perhaps my innate passion for computational biology has been ignited. I started to keep a close watch on any developments in this field. Amongst them, was the now-defunct Bioinformatics Centre (BIC) which had an office in my department. I began to attend all the bioinfo-related seminars possible and read enthusiastically in this area.

me = 'radical biochemist'

While the rest of my Biochemistry classmates were still swamped by the bewildering metabolic cycles, I was already determined to differentiate myself into a 'radical biochemist'. I believe strongly that traditional biochemistry knowledge will no longer suffice in the new knowledge-based economy. This can be further substantiated by the Singapore government's commitment to bioinformatics; millions of dollars were invested to set up Bioinformatics Institute (BII).

Along the way, I started to realise that almost everyone was claiming whatever they were doing to be 'bioinformatics'. Suddenly, this word has become a 'hip cool' word which everyone is clamouring to be associated with.

Talents in this cross-disciplinary field were rare and still are. There are two main reasons to this: firstly, most people in the life sciences are somewhat uncomfortable when it comes to computers; secondly those from computing backgrounds have such good job prospects in their fields that they couldn't care less about molecular biology. Even if they do know anything about biochemistry, they are usually only scratching the surface compared to those in the life sciences. Indeed, bioinformatics can be said to be a 'niche field'. Only people who are comfy with both computers and molecular biology can fill this void.