"Bioinformatics" is a rich field with many interesting problems.
The market is currently depressed, but should be one of the Big Things in the coming decade or two, whether renamed "Computational Biology" or something else.
Cross over is not yet that difficult, since there are still few folks formally trained in the area.
A challenge is in learning the new vocabulary and understanding how the application areas affect the algorithms, DB schemas, and other constraints on the systems to architect and implement.
It is driven by money from the pharmas, who are driven, to some extent, by an aging population and by advances in Science and Technology that allow things heretofore unattainable to be done in the search for knowledge, drugs and diagnostics. Top