The salaries in these specialized fields suggest that life science researchers can boost their pay by acquiring clinical, engineering, and computer skills. These earning trends also reflect a theme supported by other survey data: Supply and demand rule the labor market. The need for bioinformaticians, bioengineers, and clinical researchers outpaces the supply.
"There's been some concern in the country for the last 25 years about the diminishing number of clinical researchers, so the going rate has gone up," says Elvin Smith, associate vice president for Health Sciences, Texas A&M University. "Bioinformatics is a relatively new field; there is a gap between the demand for talent and the available talent."
The salary survey statistics on clinical research, bioengineering, and bioinformatics are reflected in the Abbott, Langer & Associates report "Compensation of Life Scientists." For the survey, The Scientist E-mailed invitations to 23,933 subscribers of the print edition of The Scientist, and ...
