Hi everyone!
I'm planning on applying PhD in bioinformatics this year, given an MS degree in biostatistics 2 years ago. I've been doing research mostly on EHR and machine learning on that, so my previous PI and I both think bioinformatics would be the best fit for me.
Well one question comes to me a lot recently while researching programs... I found some PI doing great research and I'm quite interested in their projects, but it seems that many of the professors combining EHR and machine learning are from a CS department... which I think would not be realistic for me to apply, even some CS department has a specific research area in bioinformatics/computational biology. However, when I took a look at departments like MIT CSBI, or U W BIME, they seem not have a main focus on those areas... Sometimes the PI's of interest also have an affiliation to those programs, but their main affiliation are still in CS department.
Well, it may get confusing... basically, programs (I "should" apply) (bioinformatics/computational biology) do not 100% comport with my interest, but I'm afraid of applying for CS programs with my favorite PI's. What should I do? Should I start shooting emails to those PI's and see if there's a chance in CS program? Or I should focus on the programs more, since there's a chance I would do research in some other area??
Thanks for any thoughts!