/sci/ - Science & Math » Thread #12226944

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Transitioning fields after undergrad

Anonymous Tue 13 Oct 16:59:44 2020 No.12226944 View Reply Original Report

Quoted By: >>12226979 >>12227029 >>12227065 >>12227088 >>12227178 >>12228861

How easy/hard is it to transition from one field to another relatively related field at postgrad level?

I'm finishing my undergrad in CS and I'm seriously considering doing computational physics or computational biomedicine after that. Is it too hard to do with no serious background in physics/biomedicine?

I'm interested in hearing your transition stories.

Anonymous

Anonymous Tue 13 Oct 2020 17:12:36 No.12226979 Report

Quoted By:

>>12226944
> Is it too hard to do with no serious background in physics/biomedicine?

That depends. If you have a strong mathematical background, it is possible but still rough. If you do, say, computational physics like condensed matter stuff, it's not a matter of knowing the computer part, it's all of the physics you don't know. The same deal goes for any other field you want to go into. You might also have a hard time convincing the departments to accept you with no background other than CS, which, truthfully, doesn't prepare you to handle research-level material. My advice is to talk with the graduate coordinator or dean of the department and ask what you would need to do.

Anonymous

Anonymous Tue 13 Oct 2020 17:17:31 No.12226996 Report

Quoted By: >>12228005

It's almost certainly possible, but they'll probably make you take a bunch of undergrad classes to get up to speed.

Anonymous

Anonymous Tue 13 Oct 2020 17:27:38 No.12227029 Report

Quoted By: >>12227090

>>12226944

I'm in roughly the second year of an undergrad in CS.

Why do you want to move away from CS?

I've been considering changing my major to physics as well but I am curious what your motivations are.

Anonymous

Anonymous Tue 13 Oct 2020 17:33:08 No.12227051 Report

Quoted By:

bump

Anonymous

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Anonymous Tue 13 Oct 2020 17:36:51 No.12227065 Report

Quoted By:

>>12226944
>I'm interested in hearing your transition stories.

Anonymous

Anonymous Tue 13 Oct 2020 17:46:06 No.12227088 Report

Quoted By: >>12227307 >>12227422

>>12226944
I am finishing up a math/CS double major, honors in both, focus in theoretical CS on the CS side, yada yada, and I'm wondering if it would be possible to go into mathematical physics / theoretical physics. I still like theoretical computer science, but the stuff that is more on the physics side and stuff that connects computation and physics on a theoretical level (ie not just simulations on a computer) interests me a lot.
I *think* I know the answer but I was wondering if anyone knows about this, or if they have experience applying to other grad programs.

Anonymous

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Anonymous Tue 13 Oct 2020 17:47:03 No.12227090 Report

Quoted By:

>>12227029
My motivations are kind of specific probably and there's nothing wrong with CS itself. Basically I tried to rule out all the different subfields in CS but one, in order to choose what to specialize in. I ended choosing High Performance Computing as the thing that I'm most interested in, and if you know anything about HPC you know it's very tightly linked with computational science. So now I'm at a point where I have to choose between doing pure HPC or computational science. And even if transitioning is doable, I might still stick to HPC if I find overall more appealing; I just know that some scientific research can be quite a bit more important and fascinating than regular performance-squeezing.

Anonymous

Anonymous Tue 13 Oct 2020 18:09:13 No.12227178 Report

Quoted By:

>>12226944
I have the same question except I'm an EE and want to transition into Physics. I've taken up to Quantum Physics 2 for reference. Is it possible?

Anonymous

Anonymous Tue 13 Oct 2020 18:41:59 No.12227307 Report

Quoted By:

>>12227088
bump, interested in the answer to this

Anonymous

Anonymous Tue 13 Oct 2020 18:48:50 No.12227327 Report

Quoted By:

My aim is to finish undergrad, maybe do masters in math, and then do something around organic chemistry for PhD, anyone have similar experience?

Anonymous

Anonymous Tue 13 Oct 2020 19:18:42 No.12227422 Report

Quoted By: >>12227465 >>12227952

>>12227088
>stuff that connects computation and physics on a theoretical level
Any examples of this? Or maybe books/resources to learn more about this?

Anonymous

Anonymous Tue 13 Oct 2020 19:29:53 No.12227465 Report

Quoted By: >>12227952

>>12227422
wolfram please stop shilling yourself on my board.

Anonymous

Anonymous Tue 13 Oct 2020 21:39:03 No.12227952 Report

Quoted By:

>>12227422
John Baez’s student Mike Stay did a thesis about this, connecting thermodynamics to algorithmic randomness, as well as some deeper connections studied through category theory
>>12227465
>wolfram
Please I’m not shilling for muh cellular automata. When i say connections to computation, I’m talking about the research in quantum information theory (the connections of communication complexity and channels to quantum theory at large), quantum ECC and holography, algorithmic randomness and thermodynamics / Ising spin glasses, Hamiltonian complexity and condensed matter, etc etc etc.

I assure you that I don’t give a shit about the wolfram muh simple cellular models stuff - I am purely interested in the intersection of mathematical physics and theoretical computer science, and broadly like both in isolation as well.

Anonymous

Anonymous Tue 13 Oct 2020 21:51:22 No.12228005 Report

Quoted By:

>>12226996
Yeah, there's a bioinformatics master at my uni where they mostly get biology grads and CS grads, and the biofags have to take a 101 CS course and the CS-chads have to take a 101 biology course.

Anonymous

Anonymous Tue 13 Oct 2020 23:00:15 No.12228236 Report

Quoted By:

Bump

Anonymous

Anonymous Wed 14 Oct 2020 02:38:23 No.12228861 Report

Quoted By:

>>12226944
I've heard applied CS -> computational physics is more common than you would think, but that you would need to catch up on physics. The PGRE isn't enough

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