> When I hear "Scientist" I tend to think "PhD level work."
There's a lot of non-PhD level work that goes into a large research project, often for aspects you may not have considered like animal care.
A "Data Scientist" might be a specialized software developer, but it doesn't follow that they have only a superficial understanding of the inner workings, even if that understanding is not good enough on its own to do much original research.
There's a lot of non-PhD level work that goes into a large research project, often for aspects you may not have considered like animal care.
A "Data Scientist" might be a specialized software developer, but it doesn't follow that they have only a superficial understanding of the inner workings, even if that understanding is not good enough on its own to do much original research.
This is the first I've heard the term "Data Scientist," though Harvard recently announced a masters-level "Computational Science and Engineering" degree. (http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2012/06/a-new-masters-...)
The bottom line is that due to the amount of data being generated by research, demand for programmers to help deal with it is rising.