Changing my field of specialization

[frys]

Short summary: I'd like to receive some advice on changing my field of study, transitioning from theoretical hep to something like Statistical Physics applied to neurosciences, but I don't know anything about the latter. Thank you in advance for the patience!

Some background: I'm a first year master student in Theoretical Physics, and I live in Southern Europe. I started my master program (2 years total length) with the idea of getting into research (specifically HEP-theoretical particle physics) and academia after doing a PhD (and a necessary post-doc). I therefore strongly oriented all my classes towards HEP exams, mainly particle physics, quantum field theory and general relativity.

The main issue is that I'm becoming more and more disenchanted about the job I was looking for, for the following reasons:

• I'm starting to be concerned about over-saturation: it seems to me that theoretical HEP is one of the most over-saturated fields in physics (I'd like to know what do you think about that, too). I am becoming more and more convinced that it doesn't really make sense (at least practically speaking, neglecting the beauty and passion about the subject) to study until my 30s and then struggle to find a stable position, due to the lack of available positions caused by poor funding allocation.
• I'm considering, on one side, most of the branches of theoretical HEP as being too abstract for me and, on the other side, I'm enjoying more and more the idea to do a job that can somehow have some applicability to help people.

I'm therefore thinking about changing my field of study. A big boost to this idea has been given by the fact that in my Physics Department there is a research team that applies Statistical Physics, network science and Physics of the Complex Systems to the study of the brain, and I'm really fascinated by the idea of applying physical and computational methods to Neuroscience. In order to do a final thesis on this I would have to switch my curriculum to one more "Statistical Physics-oriented", which is also provided by my department.
The issue is that I don't know anything about this field (and I know very little of Statistical Physics too, unfortunately) since, quite "blindly", I've never considered the idea of attending some classes outside the HEP field of study. The last time I attended some biology lectures was back in high school. I also know that I should improve my computational skills by learning Python from scratch (I have experience only in C++ and Mathematica), but I'm sure I will enjoy it.

Long story short: I'm afraid I have lost my first year of the master program and, moreover, taking this new leap into the dark will probably take me at least two/three additional years, which implies more and more expenses from an economical point of view. I have no idea whether or not changing would be suitable for me, for the reasons stated above. On the other hand, I'm aware of the positive fact that I will learn many transversal skills that are highly requested also in industry (much more than the ones provided by a formal theoretical hep education).
So:

1. Does Statistical Physics applied to Neuroscience suffer from over-saturation too? Is it an active field of research, and will it be in the future?
2. Do you know anyone who recently went into neuroscience with a physics background? What is his/her current job?
3. Is that field deeply biologically-oriented? I have pretty no knowledge in biophysics, biology, human brain anatomy, etc...
4. Is theoretical HEP as over-saturated as I think?

If there is anything I need to know before making this important decision, please let me know. Any suggestion is highly appreciated! Thank you all.

 

[andresB]

2. Do you know anyone who recently went into neuroscience with a physics background? What is his/her current job?

I'ts not recently, and I don't know him just his work in physics, but take a look at this profile ( I'm pretty sure his Ph.D was about geometric phases)
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Gonzalo_Polavieja