Hello everybody,

I'm in the last year of the gymnasium as we call it here and I'm considering a future career in Biotechnology. I'm not very informed in this ,so I thought that I could find some info here from you users.

Thanks for reading this post and spending your time!

Gymnasium in Germany?

Biotech is a very broad field though I think some common careers for people coming in from the science side (rather than management) are in the area of production, product management and sales, technical support and ancillary departments.

 

It is basically impossible to give a simple overview, but you may want to check job sites and simply use biotechnology as keyword. As a rule of thumb in the areas where you actually do something (e.g. in processing plants or doing analysis) you need roughly a masters degree, for some of the more project-oriented jobs (product management or development) they often want a PhD.

 

But again, look around first what may catch your interest.

Gymnasium in Balkan.

I was thinking that biotechnology would get me into gene manipulation early stage disease fighting(by destroying the bad genes) and things like these. So this is not the right career. Could you suggest me the right career to chose ?

To be honest those things you describe are very sci fi. The closest is fundamental research into gene functions, which is mostly done in academic settings. Also it is generally not very applied except in some very rare cases.

Well I din't see that in a move. I had heard of it.

Anyways I took it as an example ,but there are cases where they have genetically modified corn and other products, right ?

With diseases you will see careful first steps that have been blown out of proportion by media. As these things are experimental, there is not a general career path for it (it is just too limited).

With genetically modified products there are more options. Again in academia which sometimes spin-off to start-ups or the larger biotech corporations. The majority of careers in these area also not in creating GMOs but rather producing them. There is always some R&D going on, of course, but the positions there tend to be more limited.

 

Fairly often the larger companies just buy off smaller start-ups that have discovered something and then start selling the product. The hands-on parts are typically filled by analysts, various technicians and process engineers. The role of PhDs is not that different from other areas of biotechnology (i.e. often product management, development sales or support, if appropriate).

Gene modifications (of for example yeast) are studied in biotech, so that would be a good study, if you are interested. However, don't expect the study to be only about genes and gene modifications. They will teach you a LOT more, and probably very little about how to do the modifications. I think any biology or biotech study would be interesting for you. (I'm trying to keep it simple, because I agree with CharonY that it is actually impossible to summarize it).

 

In a very simplified way you can also still choose between a (poly)technical university where they would teach you how to use the micro-organisms (like how to design and operate a factory with (newly designed) micro-organisms, like bio-ethanol production), or the more academic university, which will do more fundamental science, aimed at discovery rather than applications.