The UCI Biomedical Informatics Graduate Training Program is part of the large, multidisciplinary Graduate Program in Cellular and Molecular Biosciences. The Biomedical Informatics Training Program functions as an area of study within the larger program, sharing a common core curriculum and admissions process. Genome sequencing projects are rapidly providing the genetic blueprint of organisms across the kingdoms of life. These sequences are catalyzing our abilities to understand biological systems at levels never before possible. However, new genomic technologies are generating overwhelming amounts of data that must be processed and analyzed. These massive amounts of data have created a critical need for theoretical, algorithmic, software, and hardware advances in storing, retrieving, networking, processing, modeling, analyzing, and visualizing biological and medical information. These needs are inspiring new concepts in computer science, such as genetic algorithms, artificial neural networks, computer viruses, synthetic immune systems, DNA computing methods, artificial life, and hybrid DNA gene chips. Because of these developments, computer science applications in the fields of biology and medicine showcase the latest advances in core computer science from hardware to software, from algorithms to databases, and from theory to user interfaces. This cross-fertilization has enriched both fields and will continue to do so in the coming decades. However, interdisciplinary graduate programs in bioinformatics remain scarce and the pool of individuals with training in both computational and biomedical sciences is still exceedingly small.
To meet this challenge, UCI has developed an interdisciplinary, Biomedical Informatics Training (BIT) Program that is coordinated with existing graduate degree programs in the Department of Information and Computer Science, the School of Biological Sciences/College of Medicine, and the School of Physical Sciences . The BIT Program provides in-depth graduate training in computational and life sciences with an emphasis in bioinformatics approaches to problems in molecular structure prediction and determination, and comparative and functional genomics, areas of great strength at UCI. CMB students join the BIT Program through faculty whose research interest lie in Bioinformatics. At the end of the first year, students choose a thesis advisor from this Bioinformatics research interest group, and upon acceptance into the BIT Program, a thesis co-advisor in computer science. Students in the BIT Program will take courses from a menu designed to ensure that, regardless of their primary expertise, each obtains a set of core skills related to molecular biology, genetics, biochemistry, computer modeling of biological systems, statistics, programming, and database development.
Full Biomedical Informatics Faculty Listing
