I'm currently in high school and over the summer I picked a topic (computational biology) for further research.
There's a program in my school that will try to pair me up with an appropriate lab in the following two years but I'm definitely in over my head. My teacher expects me to fully understand the topic and to come up with my own research proposals. Biology is my strong suit but even then I'm not familiar with a lot of lab procedures and I don't know what I'll have to do on the computational side.
For those of you who have worked in lab environments or are familiar with the topic, I would greatly appreciate tips on what to start studying. I still have a lot of time to learn and I don't want to waste it..
I'm currently in high school and over the summer I picked a topic (computational biology) for further research.
There's a program in my school that will try to pair me up with an appropriate lab in the following two years but I'm definitely in over my head. My teacher expects me to fully understand the topic and to come up with my own research proposals. Biology is my strong suit but even then I'm not familiar with a lot of lab procedures and I don't know what I'll have to do on the computational side.
For those of you who have worked in lab environments or are familiar with the topic, I would greatly appreciate tips on what to start studying. I still have a lot of time to learn and I don't want to waste it..
being expected to fully understand the topic seems a little vague: do you mean that you are expected to familiarize yourself with what computational biology is and what in general people of computation biology do? that seems most reasonable but i'm not too familiar with what they expect you to be capable of for "high school research"
in any case i can't help with the biology part but computational research is generally done on, you guessed it, computers. if they're putting you in a "lab" to conduct actual research then most likely you'll be sat in front of a computer and have to learn computation, which more or less involves you learning programming/scripting. this is assuming that what you're expected to do is what i think it is.
if it helps heres a biophysics group at my university, and you could read about their research: http://allardlab.com/
they are a mix of physicists, biologists, and mathematicians. the "computation" part is that they try and model certain biological processes mathematically with guiding principles of physics (ie why does a certain biological process occur? what is the entropy of the system, or what are the driving forces, etc). as it turns out most biological process have nontrivial physical dynamics, and in their ridiculous complexity require very powerful computation to do reliable modeling.
it is possible that this is entirely off the mark though; you should elaborate on what this program and what you're expected to do
being expected to fully understand the topic seems a little vague: do you mean that you are expected to familiarize yourself with what computational biology is and what in general people of computation biology do? that seems most reasonable but i'm not too familiar with what they expect you to be capable of for "high school research"
in any case i can't help with the biology part but computational research is generally done on, you guessed it, computers. if they're putting you in a "lab" to conduct actual research then most likely you'll be sat in front of a computer and have to learn computation, which more or less involves you learning programming/scripting. this is assuming that what you're expected to do is what i think it is.
if it helps heres a biophysics group at my university, and you could read about their research: http://allardlab.com/
they are a mix of physicists, biologists, and mathematicians. the "computation" part is that they try and model certain biological processes mathematically with guiding principles of physics (ie why does a certain biological process occur? what is the entropy of the system, or what are the driving forces, etc). as it turns out most biological process have nontrivial physical dynamics, and in their ridiculous complexity require very powerful computation to do reliable modeling.
it is possible that this is entirely off the mark though; you should elaborate on what this program and what you're expected to do
Given that computational biology has it's foundations in computer science, you should start with learning a bit of programming if you already haven't. I'd recommend Python, because it has an easy-to-use syntax, and resembles psuedocode, something that most books on algorithms use.
Here are some books you might find helpful:
Given that computational biology has it's foundations in computer science, you should start with learning a bit of programming if you already haven't. I'd recommend Python, because it has an easy-to-use syntax, and resembles psuedocode, something that most books on algorithms use.
Here are some books you might find helpful:
[list]
[*] [url=http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Algorithms-Edition-Thomas-Cormen/dp/0262033844?tag=teamfortresst-20]Introduction to Algorithms[/url] - The classic undergraduate text for CS 101
[*] [url=http://www.amazon.com/Concrete-Mathematics-Foundation-Computer-Science/dp/0201558025/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1440652865&sr=1-1&keywords=concrete+mathematics]Concrete Mathematics: A Foundation for Computer Science[/url]
[/list]