Posted on 11/01/2008 8:17:22 AM PDT by Niuhuru
Are there any virologists on this forum? I'm interested in beocming a virologist and I would like to make acquaintences with people in this field.
You don’t just become a virologist- it is a field of biochemestry. At a good medical school, 15 years and a couple hundred thousand dollars of student loans later, and you should be there.
They won’t respond, it’s Saturday morning and they were all our replicating last night.
I’m not a virologist; I’m an engineer.
The son of one of my friends became a virologist; and after finishing college landed a position at the CDC.
He lasted about 10 months. Not quite a year into the work and he decided that the CDC was too dangerous. He is home now and working for some small local pharmaceutical company.
I work in the same dept with several virologists, but I’m not one myself. As is typical of most science in the US, you spend at least half of your time writing grants to support yourself. Maybe 1 in 20 grant applications to the NIH gets funded and always much less than what you requested. The actual funding rate varies depending on what area of NIH your grant gets reviewed in. You can get a great review with outstanding scores, but get no funding if the program manager in that area doesn’t like your project.
You will also be working with a lot of liberals every day because this is a job that often involves sucking money out of the taxpayers pocket. So you work with people with the mindset that conservatives are the enemy.
A virologist can work in a private company, but those are not so common. Even the large companies contract work out through university or other federally supported labs when they can.
As for the actual work of virology, I would never do it since it is extrememly boring in my mind. I prefer the clinical side. But to each his own.
Get into a biology program. Molecular biology, biochemistry, etc. When you get to junior or senior year, ask a virologist in the program to study in his lab. Then go to grad school for at least a masters degree.
Virology ping
“The son of one of my friends became a virologist; and after finishing college landed a position at the CDC.
He lasted about 10 months. Not quite a year into the work and he decided that the CDC was too dangerous. He is home now and working for some small local pharmaceutical company.”
Sounds like a good subject for a magazine article, mention it to him.
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