Unlocking Life's Secrets
Career Opportunities in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology

It’s a revolution in our understanding of the chemicals and forces that give us life and produce illness and death.

Over the past several years, an evergrowing arsenal of techniques has helped researchers dissect the innermost secrets of the cell and develop new ways to detect and attack disease. The techniques also have been used to produce vast amounts of once rare drugs, trace the path of evolution, create instant tests for a host of illnesses, warn people when their children might inherit a deadly disease, and identify criminals and victims of disasters.

The leaders in this revolution have been the biochemists and molecular biologists who explore the chemical realm inside cells, study the development of illness, and search for ways to improve life on Earth.

If cancer is to be cured, if the planet’s pollution is to be cleaned up, or if the aging process is ever to be slowed, it will probably be the biochemists and molecular biologists who will provide the knowledge for these breakthroughs.

Few fields are so interesting, so challenging and so potentially rewarding.

To become part of the revolution, it takes a willingness to learn, and a natural curiosity about how life works. It’s an opportunity to be an explorer in a microscopic world that is as strange and breathtaking as any imaginable.

Download Unlocking Life's Secrets: Career Opportunities in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology

PDF format, 851KB, 24Pages.

The American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
www.asbmb.org

Table of Contents
The Challenges . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
Preparing for a Career in Biochemistry
and Molecular Biology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
High School Foundation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
Community Colleges —
Laboratory Technician Training . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .10
College Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .10
Specialized Laboratory Training . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .12
Graduate School . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .12
Admission Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .13
Which Graduate School to Choose . . . . . . . . . . . . .15
Financial Aid . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .16
Post-doctoral Research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .16
Careers in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology . . . . . . . . .17
Community College Graduates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .17
College Graduates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .18
Master of Sciences (M.S.) Graduates . . . . . . . . . . . . . .19
Doctorate (Ph.D.) Graduates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .20
College and University Employment . . . . . . . . . . . .20
Industrial and Government Employment . . . . . . . . .22
Careers in the Biotechnology Industry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .22

CAREERS IN THE BIOTECHNOLOGY INDUSTRY
An especially interesting and important area for employment is biotechnology. Publicly- and privately-held corporations belonging to the biotechnology, medical device, pharmaceutical, biopharmaceutical, and agricultural biotechnology family of industries are commonly and collectively lumped together into the generic biotechnology industry. They share a dependency upon a cluster of exciting, new technologies flowing from biochemistry and the other molecular life sciences, chemistry, biology, applied physics, several engineering sectors, and applied mathematics/computational sciences.

While biotechnology is being applied in a number of market sectors, including agricultural biotechnology, genomics, proteomics, human diagnostics, medical devices, medical therapeutics, scientific equipment/supplies, scientific services and other areas such as environmental protection and veterinary medical applications, the largest sector in the nation and in the world is the medical therapeutics sector, almost 90%.

The workforce of the U.S. biotechnology industry is in excess of 200,000, growing at 12-17% annually over the last five years, with conservative predictions of its doubling by 2012. The biotechnical workforce is estimated to be 19% Ph.D., 17% M.S., 50% B.S., and 14% combined vocational-education/community college trained. The biotechnology industry is in a state of dynamic flux and dramatic increases in the workforce are expected in phase with the new discovery research, applied research, and development research, associated with unanticipated new technologies and the human genome and human proteome initiatives, impacts that might accelerate the growth of the industry beyond 700,000 employees by 2015.

The biotechnology industry offers magnificent career opportunities for people trained in the molecular life sciences, with opportunities across the spectrum of all company activities, many or most of these exciting opportunities lying outside of the basic research laboratory. Industry leaders identify the most critical short-term and long-term industry workforce needs being in the applied sector (pertaining to those skill sets associated with the transition of companies from the discovery, basic research mode into applied research, development, commercialization and manufacturing.)

This is a most exciting time to be a biochemist/molecular biologist. This field offers a fantastic and wellcompensated future for the next generation of molecular life science voyagers, for those daring to venture into the excitements and beauty of the unknown.

Comments (0)

Name

Email

Comment

smaller | bigger

Add Comment