The Salary of an Assistant Professor of Bioinformatics

Bioinformatics Study

• College and university instructors conduct research, develop technology applicable to medicine and science, apply computer software to the fields of biology and medicine and also use hardware and software to "acquire, store, organize, archive, analyze, or visualize such data," according to the National Institutes of Health Biomedical Information Science and Technology Initiative Consortium. While groups of teachers take the titles of assistant, associate or professor of bioinformatics, other schools hire instructors for positions in related bioinformatics specialties, including algorithmic bioinformatics, computational genomics, applied mathematics, biostatistics and computational sciences. The type of department determines the hiring title. Departments of bioinformatics typically hire entry-level instructors as lecturers or assistant professors, although science and medical schools also hire teachers with the same titles.
  
  

Competitive Hiring

• Higher-education instructors newly employed in the fields of the humanities and the arts typically have little room for salary negotiation, but new hires for assistant professor positions in the field of bioinformatics have more room for negotiation. This can be attributed to the limited number of candidates in the relatively new field. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports a general shift in hiring practices as higher-education institutions move from employing permanent assistant positions to one-year contracts and part-time instructors. But the newness of the field of bioinformatics and the lack of a large employment pool of job candidates mean greater job stability, and also tenure contracts, for new professorial hires in the fields related to bioinformatics.
  
  

National Salary Range

• Indeed reported new teaching hires in bioinformatics in Dover, Delaware, earned $52,000 in July, 2011. Indeed's national salary survey for bioinformatics assistant professor hires found the college and university teachers earning $58,760 in the same year. The mean annual earnings for college and university teachers at all levels, assistant through full professor, and in all departments was $58,830 in 2008, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The bureau found hiring in the general field of biotechnological research and development increasing faster than other employment segments in 2011, with a reported growth of 15 percent from 2008 through 2018.
  
  

Bioinformatic Teaching Openings

• The salaries for assistant professors in the field of bioinformatics compare favorably to other higher-education fields of study. The Bureau of Labor Statistics recorded approximately 1.7 million people working as postsecondary teachers, at all appointment levels. The BLS found 64,700 postsecondary teachers in the field of biological sciences in 2008, and an additional 38,800 working in the field of computer sciences, and more than 54,000 teachers in the mathematical sciences. Assistant professors holding a doctorate in a field related to bioinformatics have the best chances for employment and earn the highest salaries at the time of hiring, according to the BLS.