Grad School at 33? Dave Holden (dholden@picosof.com)
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12 Jan 1995 21:57:44 -0500

Dear fellow nanotechnologists:

I am soliciting advice on graduate school. I am considering going to grad school to get into Nanotechnology as applied to Molecular Biology. I have Electrical Engineering and Computer Science degrees from the University of Michigan. However, I've been out of school for 9 years. I have a notion of getting into a Materials Science program. I could combine STM/AFM work with an emphasis on Biological Instrumentation and perhaps Computational or Synthetic Chemistry. Ideally I would like to design nano-machines that perform intracellular operations.

I could get directly into grad school in Materials. If I went back strictly into molecular biology I would have to get an undergrad degree first.

I don't want to do random consumer electronics work the rest of my life when there's so much IMPORTANT BioTech/NanoTech work to be done. If I get directly into nanotechnology I can see myself working until I die(frozen). If I stay in consumer electronics I will probably want to retire fairly early. On the other hand, I don't want to spend my life in relative poverty for the nanotechnology "cause".

Questions:
1) What are the employment opportunities for a PhD with a degree like this? I could enjoy doing STM type applications/research even if it wasn't biology oriented. As long as I was working towards general Nanotechnology I would be satisfied. But, I hear horror stories of underemployed materials and chemistry and biology people. I know several chemists and biologist who think computer programming is a great "trade". I sure would feel stupid 10 years from now trudging back to random device driver programming under Windows 2000.

2) What are my chances of getting into a decent school at age 33?

Thanks for any input,
Dave Holden 

-- 
"Reality is a sandwich I did not order", Zippy the Pinhead.