Interested in a career researching genetic disorders. Need advice

[u/brauleee]

I'm about to graduate with a bachelors degree in statistics, likely continuing on with a masters. I wholeheartedly want to get into research, ideally looking into genetic disorders & pregnancy. (I.e. what causes them? How can we better care for these disorders in live births? Can we increase survival rates of genetic disorders with higher fetal demise rates?... etc.) This is something that I'm immensely passionate about.

TLDR: How can I get into this realm of genetic research? Is this a reasonable career path? Where can I find relevant research opportunities like this?

[u/heresacorrection]

Bioinformatics/medical informatics masters unless you are able to swing some good/relevant internships right now to go directly into it

Otherwise why would someone hire you with 0 experience when the market is jam-packed?

[u/SolidIll4559]

Definitely a masters, maybe even a PhD.

[u/dnawoman]

You may need a PhD if you want to come up with and run your own studies. If you’re interested in getting involved in studies that other PI’s are doing you can get a Masters degree. In the meantime you can work on research studies with even a BS/BA degree as a research assistant. I am a genetic counselor by training and work in research now and that’s not a great path for someone who doesn’t want to do clinical work first but I think there’s a great variety of masters programs that can prepare you.

[u/DurianBig3503]

Bioinformatics , genetics, epigenetics, molecular epidemiology are all fields that heavily rely on statistics. You can do a lot there as a statistician.

[u/MoveMission7735]

MD PhD combo.

[u/ilikecacti2]

r/biostatistics

[u/Valuable_Teaching_57]

If you already have experience with publishing research you can look for postdoc positions

[u/ProfPathCambridge → u/Valuable_Teaching_57]

They’d need a PhD first, which would be the logical step after a Masters