Emily Honeycutt was the first graduate of NC State’s bioinformatics program. (Photo by Roger Winstead)

The first graduate of the bioinformatics program at NC State didn't have to look far to find a job.

Emily Honeycutt, who completed her master's degree in May, was recently hired by the university as a consultant at the Bioinformatics Research Center. In her role as a research "bioinformatician" (a new word made up to describe her position), Honeycutt serves as a liaison between researchers and computer programs.

"I help the researchers better understand the computer programs they're using," Honeycutt said.

Bioinformatics is a marriage of biological and computational science. It provides a basis for compiling, analyzing and accessing genomic data. The field of study grew out of a need to deal with the massive amounts of data that has been collected over the past decade by scientists working on the Human Genome Project, which aims to map the approximately 30,000 genes that make up the human body.

"Researchers were overwhelmed by the amount of data they were collecting," said Dr. Spencer Muse of the NC State bioinformatics program. "There was a need for automation to help store, organize and analyze the vast amounts of raw data so we could begin to put it to use."

One of the programs that Honeycutt is working with is Perl, a programming language (much like Java or HTML) used to process text-based data. Since the majority of genetic data is in text format, Perl is a very useful tool.

Another program being used is BLAST, a means of searching databases for gene sequences that have already been mapped. BLAST allows researchers to enter a sequence they are working with and compare it to other sequences.

Honeycutt developed an understanding of these tools through her training in NC State's bioinformics program. That program is one of the nation's largest, with 47 doctoral and masters students currently enrolled. It is highly interdepartmental, combining the shared efforts of the statistics and genetics departments among others. The program acquired room to grow with the completion of the Bioinformatics Research Center that opened on Centennial Campus in March 2001.

Students coming into the bioinformatics program can expect a study based heavily on both genetics and statistics. "I had to catch up on my genetics and statistics," Honeycutt said. "I came in with a background in computer science." Honeycutt said that she could see a lot of difficulty for students who didn't share her computer science background, as part of their training is in the computer applications used to store and analyze genomic data. "But," she said, "the curriculum is still being shaped. It is gaining strength in its computer science aspect."

Honeycutt said that completion of the bioinformatics program will leave job seekers in a strong position, even in a struggling economy.