I am an undergraduate majoring in statistics. Due to my socio-economic background, I am thinking about pursuing a PhD in Statistics because I have seen more job listings asking for that. But my true passion is in computational neuroscience, so I am wondering… is there anyone here with a PhD in Statistics that does research in computational neuroscience? And if so, how should I go about getting a PhD in Statistics while preparing myself for research in computational neuroscience?
I have done what you are proposing. Of course, you’ll want to take courses in neuroscience and to work with real data as soon as you can. From statistics, you’ll make a lot of use of non-linear regression and clustering methods, as well as neural network and machine learning methods. You should pay a lot of attention to methods to assess whether a statistical model is really adequate for a data set; most are not.
Happy to discuss further.by video or chat.
Almost anything neuroscience is pretty interdisciplinary, and many of us have come from non-traditional backgrounds but still converged on studying the brain. My own story is quite nonlinear so I’ll spare you, but because of it your post struck me as I recalled how confusing and scary it was to have long term goals but not a clear plan of how to achieve them. I think you majoring in statistics is a very good foundation for computational neuroscience. My concern comes from you knowing what your true passion is, and yet are allowing yourself to get potentially side-tracked by an idea of what to do based on job listings. Job listings are incomplete, overly formal and just a tiny glimpse into what the real research world is. I would suggest do not invest the 4+ years on a PhD doing something that you see as a stepping-stone; rather, move directly towards the discipline you’re most passionate about. Note: it’s also wise to be somewhat flexible about where you land (e.g. not all labs have $ for students, etc), but you should at least strongly pursue computational neuroscience, and then be a little flexible when choosing a lab within that field. Those are my $0.02 and good luck.