Richard Green, a computational biologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, was one of 118 young researchers to win a US$50,000 two-year research fellowship from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, a philanthropic institution based in New York City. Green tells Nature how the fellowship will help to distinguish his work from that of his mentors.

Why did you choose computational biology over bench work?

I found that the cycle of determining whether an experimental idea is good or bad was much faster with a computer than a pipette — which is a big deal for someone like me, with many varied interests I hope to explore.

What is the market like for computational biologists?

There is a huge demand, but not that many people who marry a deep understanding of molecular biology with the ability to think in terms of algorithms. It's really a seller's market for people with these skills. As a result, I'm in the enviable position of getting to pick and choose what I want to work on. It's important to note that there is not some new discipline called 'computational biology'; it's really a third entity that combines biology and computational ability. I suggest that young scientists become specialists in both disciplines.

Has the prolific generation of genomics data altered career expectations?

The bar has been raised: the sequencing and basic analysis of a genome is no longer an automatic paper in Science or Nature. But that's a good thing. We have to be more creative; for example, species' genomes can be compared to gain an evolutionary perspective of the transition to multicellularity.

How did you navigate your postdoc?

If grad school is where a young scientist's ship is assembled, then the postdoc is the launching pad where you take off — or not. I had a great set of projects as a graduate student in Steven Brenner's lab at the University of California, Berkeley. One of my last projects was investigating how alternative gene splicing evolves in flies. As a postdoc, I wanted to ask the next obvious question: how quickly did alternative splicing evolve between chimps and humans? I was fortunate that my adviser introduced me to Svante Pääbo, director of evolutionary genetics at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. Having your boss put you on these top researchers' radar screens is incredibly helpful.

How did you get involved with the Neanderthal genome sequencing project?

Blind luck. Shortly after I arrived, Svante was experimenting with a new shotgun sequencing method before applying it to the precious few samples of Neanderthal DNA extracted from bone remnants. He wanted someone to align the sequences of ancient cave-bear DNA derived using this method to other genome sequences in the database — something I could easily do, so I volunteered to impress my boss. Those alignments proved that the method worked. We then applied it to some of our best Neanderthal extracts, and Svante encouraged me to work on this. The Neanderthal project was such an incredible opportunity that I left the alternative splicing to the side.

Did that cause problems with funders?

A little. I dutifully told my funders about my change in focus — and I had to reapply under a different programme to avoid getting my funding pulled. It was unfortunate that the funders didn't immediately see that this was a once-in-a-lifetime project and that I was perfectly positioned to do it.

Is your work riskier than most scientists'?

Maybe. One of the hallmarks of my research is that I do many things. This traditionally has been viewed as a weakness. If you have many areas of expertise, they can erode one another in people's perceptions. I want to use my expertise to move different fields forward; for example, sequencing the alligator genome will offer new insight into developmental as well as evolutionary biology.