Jobs of the Future

During this graduation season I've peered into my crystal ball to ponder career paths of the future. For all the newly credentialed college grads here are some careers you or your kids (and you will have kids) many need to focus future studies on.

Quantum Information Scientist - An emerging information science discipline that studies and builds systems that utilize quantum effects in physics, information theory and computation. It includes theoretical issues in computational models as well as more experimental topics in quantum physics including what can and cannot be done with quantum information. This can apply to all manners scientific disciplines such as biology and systems complexity science. One would need to be versed in large array of disciplines such as physics, statistics, computer science and engineering, math and other forms of information theory. As microprocessors and other computational components get smaller, the laws of classical laws of physics start not to apply and quantum effects start to take place. The next realm in computing will be at the quantum level in hardware. A thorough understanding is required before delving into the quirkiness of quantum interaction exploited for computation. Most large universities with strong traditions of math and science offer graduate level studies in quantum information science and quantum computation.

A good source to start understanding the potential of this field is this Wikipedia page on Quantum Information Science. Another excellent and historical source would comes from the National Science foundations year 2000 synopsis describing the field and its potential impacts.

Who will hire you?
- Government Defense & Intelligence
- Computer Hardware companies
- Universities

Synthetic Biologist - an emerging area of biological research that combines biological sciences, computer science, chemistry and engineering. It requires an understanding of computational bio-modeling encompassing the implementation of computer programming methods like algorithms and data structures and graphics design for visualization.

Links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_biology
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computational_biomodeling

Who will hire you?
- Drug companies
- Hospitals
- Agricultural Businesses
-Chemical Companies
-Universities

Data Scientist - A person who can extract information from large datasets and then present something of use to an organization. the skills need for this vary, but a computer science background would help as well as being strong in math (particularly statistics). A background in graphic design would complement these skills if extracted data needs to take a more visual form. Dr. Ben Fry did his doctoral dissertation on this emerging field. I have been preaching the importance of Big Data for a couple years now. We need future data scientist to be multi-disciplinary practitioner of all the above skills because data is exploding. Just ask LinkedIn.

Current positions available:
- Data Scientist - LinkedIn

Who will hire you?
- Governments
- Banks
- Internet Companies
- Libraries (if there still around)
- Hospitals
- Retail
- Agricultural Businesses
- Universities
- Logistics & Transportation Companies

Quantum Biologist/Bioinfomatics Scientist - Though relatively established as an academic and career track, these fields are still emerging and will only prove more important as advances in medicine continue. In 10-15 years they will enviably merge. At the molecular level and below more and more research is discovering quantum effects. There are many courses offered already across many institutions dealing in the area of Quantum Biology. Our depth of knowledge will continue to require data collection on these biological effects and the computational and analytical capacity to model them. With the advent of quantum computers, with their inherit ability to simulate the world at the quantum mechanical level, a quantum biologist needs the skill set to build these simulations and make sense of them. Quantum Information Scientist will build these quirky tools and Quantum Biologist will utilize these tools to delve deeper into nature and discover new things. Areas of study required: quantum physics, thermal dynamics, quantum and classical computer science, applied mathematics, statistics, biochemistry, chemistry,biophysics, molecular biology, genetics, ecology, evolution and anatomy. Basically you’ll need to be Pre-Med student with bachelors degrees in both computer science and theoretical physics. Good Luck.

Current positions available:
- Computational Biologist - Cofactor Genomics Bioinformatics - St. Louis, MO
- Postdoctoral Fellowship - Computational Biology/Bioinformatics-NIH - Raleigh-Durham, NC

Who will hire you?
- Governments
- Hospitals
- Pharmaceutical Companies
- Agricultural Businesses
- Universities

Next up, what are the course loads going to look like with these future career paths? Stay tuned.

Originally posted on Blogs@RelativeProgress.com