Alumnus testimonial
Lotte Witjes – Alumni MSc Bioinformatics and Business analyst
I did my Bachelor in Biology and for my Master studies I decided to join Bioinformatics because I became curious about data analysis during my bachelor thesis. Now I work as a business quantitative analyst for a company and what I liked about this program is the fact that gives you the tools that then can be applied in many disciplines, opening a wide variety of possibilities after finishing the studies.
Bioinformatics programme is really broad and it teaches you techniques of data analysis that are needed everywhere. It gives you the freedom to explore other subjects than Biology and it doesn't really matter if you stay in the Bioinformatics field.
Why did you choose to study Bioinformatics?
"I did my bachelor studies in the field of Biology. During my thesis, I did some lab work and I was generating a lot of data from my experiments. I wanted to be able to know how to make sense of these data that I just made in the lab. That is what mainly drove me to join the master in Bioinformatics at WUR. At the beginning it was quite challenging because you really need to push through to get into the logic thinking of programming. The course Programming in Python, for example, was the first experience for me in programming. At first I was finding it really difficult to come up with the solutions and to learn the logic thinking you need to program. But then, after a while and a lot of exercise, it becomes easier and easier to find creative solutions to the problems."
Did you encounter any challenges after finishing your studies?
"When I was doing my second thesis at the Department of Systems Biology, I got offered the PhD position, which I accepted at first. But during the first couple of months I felt that I this wasn't the choice for me because overall I really prefer to work in a team. So it was indeed a challenge but it made me realize that I prefer working in a team, therefore I just started looking for jobs in data analysis, not strictly related to the area of Biology and Bioinformatics."
What is your current job?
"At the moment I am working at a Dutch tax organization as a quantitative business analyst. My job consists in modelling, forecasting, statistics and operations research. Even though I really like it, I have decided to do something totally different from my study and my job at the moment is not related to the field of biology. But I think that this is possible because this study is really giving you broad knowledge that can be applied to many disciplines."