From: Robert J. Bradbury (bradbury@aeiveos.com)
Date: Sun Mar 31 2002 - 15:38:04 MST
Leaving aside comments by Greg, Forrest and Curt
(useful comments all) -- lets go to to the heart of
the question:
> He likes the idea of being able to see his work
> directly helping people.
The critical thing from this perspective is how
tight does he require his feedback loop to be?
The feedback loop time in programming may be
days. The feedback loop time in politics may
be decades. Engineering and Law may be someplace
between those limits.
There will be a critical distinction between
feedback loops based on biotech (where the parts
already exist) and nanotech (where the parts for
the most part have yet to be designed).
If he can take a vision (and Nanomedicine has
some *really* far out visions) and work at it
for a very long time -- certain that he will succeed,
not needing very much self-reinforcement, then an
emphasis on chemical and mechanical engineering
is the way to go. That path will ultimately provide
the greatest yield -- though the return on investment
times may be long.
If he needs shorter feedback loops (a few years
or less), then programming is the way to go with
a perspective of delving deeper into molecular
modeling, how to display molecular interactions,
how to accelerate the interpretation of protein
structures, etc.
This is the decade of genome engineering.
The next decade will be about nanosystems engineering.
When educating oneself today, one has to prepare
oneself to operate in both environments.
Robert
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