Introduction
Hello, I’m Maarten de Vries! Originally from the Netherlands, I went to Harvard for undergrad. I started out interested in math, computer science and biology and took many disparate classes in those departments. Some students knew from day one that they wanted to be a doctor, or lawyer, or scientist, but I was not one of them. For most of my time in college, I felt like I was “keeping all options open”, taking classes I was interested in but without a clear plan for after graduation. Only halfway during my junior year, I switched my major to statistics because it offered a new computational biology track. It ended up being the best decision I could have made. To this day, the CompBio field is very exciting to me because the amount of omics data is ever-increasing, and we can use a wide toolkit of computational methods to demystify the secrets hidden within all this data.
Currently, I work as a computational scientist at Cellarity, where my daily tasks include managing large omics datasets to accelerate drug discovery, writing Python code, reviewing scientific papers, and building models for specific projects.
Data Science Fellow
career options
The field of computational biology offers a variety of career paths for those interested in merging biology with technology. These roles range from handling genetic data to developing models for medical research. Each position requires a specific set of skills and serves a unique purpose in the broader context of biological sciences and technology.
Depending on your academic background, there are different paths to computational biology. If you are a CS major who wants to work in computational biology, I’d recommend you at least take one or two biology courses. You don’t need to be an expert, but you need to know the basics. Conversely, if you’re a biology major, take an intro computer science class. It will make the jump to writing code to analyze your biological data a lot less scary. Regardless of your background, joining a lab and getting involved in research as early as possible will really help you think like a scientist.
Data Science Fellow
skills
What are the main hard skills you use on a daily basis in your current job?
What are the main soft skills you use on a daily basis in your current job?
Maarten
’s personal path
Tell us about your personal journey in
Data Science Fellow
:
Most people in computational biology have a PhD, which is valuable given the field’s complexity and the need for specialized knowledge. However, especially on the data science and engineering side, it’s certainly possible to break in before going to graduate school.
My own path involved undergraduate research and teaching experience in computational biology, and a willingness to learn. In terms of how I concretely found my first job, I ended up befriending a school alum who I met through a university career portal. When he was building his team, he offered me a chance to interview, where I presented on my research in undergrad. In short, university provides the opportunity to build the hard skills that qualify you for your first job, but do not underestimate the importance of networking.
What would you tell your younger you regarding building your current career?
Final thoughts & tips
Resources to dig in more
Bits in Bio
A community and event hub for those interested in the overlap of computers and biology.
Nucleate
A community for students interested in biotechnology.
scVerse
Offers tutorials and packages for analyzing single-cell data in Python.
Figure One Lab
Provides guidance for starting your first computational biology portfolio project, created by my mentor Dean Lee.
