Computer Science

[rlwebb]

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Anyone familiar with programs combining MD with doctoral computer science work? I think this would be a fascinating combination. My undergraduate degree is in computer science.

 

[SpeakLittleB]

I think that sounds great. I just registered on SDN today and picked my name for this new computer program called little b. www.littleb.org. It hasn't been released yet, but I think it sounds really exciting.

I've done some work on mathematical models of development... and seriously, we were completely stuck until we could find someone who could write programs. So if you get good at biology and can implement that with computer science, I'd totally go for it. As biologists have done enough benchwork to figure out the mechanisms of many processes, computer science people who understand the problems are so important to putting all the information together in a system. Make sure when you're applying that you can really express how your computer science doctoral degree would benefit your medical career though.

 

[hardy]

Anyone familiar with programs combining MD with doctoral computer science work? I think this would be a fascinating combination. My undergraduate degree is in computer science.

There are a few but most schools feel more comfortable with the traditional combinations. I know two MD/PhDs who did their PhD in computer science but interestingly, they both switched to different research fields and their computer science work is only marginally applicable.

 

[xanthines]

I think a purely CompSci thesis would be pretty hard to get by your program. However, you might find what you're looking for under the guise of computational neuroscience and maybe informatics.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=computational+neuroscience+phd&btnG=Search
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=medical+informatics+phd&btnG=Search

Caveat emptor: I know nothing about computer science!

-X

 

[mjs]

Anyone familiar with programs combining MD with doctoral computer science work? I think this would be a fascinating combination. My undergraduate degree is in computer science.

Lots of Genomics, Bioinformatics, and Computational Biology graduate programs have affiliated and adjunct faculty who are in hard-core quantitative departments. There are computer scientists all over the place in biology now.


[edit]Also, 3 of the 13 people in my graduate class are almost entirely computational in their focus and I'm sure there are plenty of computational kids in MSTPs now. They were everywhere at my interviews a few years back. Find them and ask how they roll.

 

[thos]

An alum of our program did his PhD in Comp Sci, although I understand it was a battle of wills with the (then) program director. After a couple of years of Path residency he put his PhD to good use by going on to found a company called MedMined (http://www.medmined.com/mmiFront.asp?ID=2).

 

[physicsnerd42]

When I was interviewing for MD/PhD at Dartmouth, I met with some comp sci professors since the school allows you to do the PhD portion of the dual degree in computational biology through the CS department.

 

[dr.z]

Computational Biology maybe the way to go.