The Bioinformatician

We are aware that gray zones exist and will likely always exist, even as the field of bioinformatics evolves. However, it will be easier to provide an answer to our question. As for the definition provided by OED, we propose that bioinformaticians are experts in the field of bioinformatics. They may be users, but this is not enough to consider them as bioinformaticians (i.e., an expert). Bioinformaticians are scientists who develop and conduct research based on a bioinformatics approach, they do not just use the tools to better understand a biological problem. It is a little like saying that driving your car to work does not make you a mechanic. A bioinformatician is a scientist who understands the underlying “mechanics” of bioinformatics or, more realistically, an aspect of bioinformatics (genomics, protein structure predictions, phylogenetic models, etc.). In a more conceptual framework, bioinformaticians can perhaps be seen as the “missing link” required for improving multidisciplinary research. Since they can bridge biological sciences, informatics, and mathematics, fully fledged bioinformaticians can be valuable assets for multidisciplinary studies. For example, more and more bioinformaticians are becoming involved in major multidisciplinary studies such as those on cancer (Hanauer et al., 2007; Valencia and Hidalgo, 2012) as well as in whole-exome sequencing (WES), which is an increasingly important method used in medical studies (Sanders et al., 2012; Wang et al., 2013; Zhu et al., 2015).
Source: Frontiers | Who qualifies to be a bioinformatician? | Bioinformatics and Computational Biology