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"Although many of the jobs in the RNAi industry will closely resemble positions in other industries--biochemists, molecular biologists, and pharmacologists will be in demand--some specializations will be particularly sought after."

"I had the good sense to have a serious accident when the market was down." --Cynthia Robbins-Roth

"Here you have to make sure you're getting things done and meeting your objectives. It's almost a completely different experience."

"I gravitated toward the principle of minimum effort." --Ben Goertzel, chief scientific officer, BioMind LLC

"Nothing panned out for years, but [the techniques] did come to fruition. You have to make the investment." --Andrea Ghez

There are molecular biologists, and biochemists, and immunologists. There are toxicologists, and pharmacologists. But there are no pharmacogenomicists.

"Because I was still passionate about this, I stuck through it and managed to keep it running with lots of help from some very good people. Now I have quite a bit of business experience." --Lee Jensen

"As soon as some conference deadline comes up, you see us working like maniacs to finish … papers, just like we did when we were in school." --Henrique Malvar, the director of Microsoft's Redmond research lab

"When we have a question, it doesn't matter what it is, they answer it. It's a complete exchange of information … they've essentially opened up all their technology to us."

--Marc Donohue

"There isn't a pharmaceutical company that doesn't want these people. [Fellowship participants] are getting calls from headhunters 6 months or a year before they've finished." --Dave Flockhart, professor of medicine, Indiana University School of Medicine

Biotechnology is about opportunity. And risk.

"Working with the close-knit group of scientists is giving her exposure to many aspects of the research, and that validates part of her reasoning for coming to a start-up company like Alnylam."

Systems biology seeks to connect the dots between molecular data. It's a hot career field, but success requires making connections between disciplines.

"It would be really heartbreaking to spend 18 days doing work in the submersible and get back home to the lab only to find out you screwed up. I've seen it happen a lot." - Craig Cary

HHMI’s grants, for example, provide "an opportunity to do your work where you might not otherwise be able to get the funding you need," says Conley.

"This is an environment where everyone is considered and assumed to be a responsible, engaged adult until proven otherwise. You do what you have to do to get the job done." -Holly Butler

The specter of such enormous destruction would, you might think, create good job prospects for scientists interested in that sort of thing. But just like the rumored 'big one' it aims to predict, the boom in earthquake-science careers hasn't happened yet.

Biotech companies are gearing up to manufacture product, but they face a shortage of talent as most young scientists interested in biotechnology have congregated to research.

In 2000, NSF received about 3000 computer science proposals with a success rate of 30%. In 2004, the number of applications had risen to 6500 and the success rate had dropped to 16%.

"You cannot do one project. You have to do a number of projects to try to get to the answer, hoping one of the approaches will work out." --Yimin Zou