Bioinformatics and Computational Biology (BICB) Minor Program

About the program

If a BICB graduate student pursues a Minor in a different program, courses that are used to satisfy course requirements in the Core Areas cannot simultaneously be used to satisfy credit requirements for a Minor.  A maximum of 6 course credits in the Elective courses may be applied towards a M.S. Graduate Minor and a maximum of 9 course credits in the Elective courses may be applied towards a Ph.D. Graduate Minor, and thus count toward satisfying both the Elective and the Minor requirements.

Graduate students who major in other programs may obtain a Minor in the BICB graduate program. For the doctoral Minor, a minimum of 12 credits must be taken from two of Core Areas 1-3, and one of Elective Areas 4-13. For a Master’s Minor, a minimum of 9 credits must be completed from two of Core Areas 1-3, and one of Elective Areas 4-13. Core BICB courses or core seminars may be included in the total credits required by the doctoral and Master’s minor.

Core areas and Electives

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Core areas

  • Biochemistry, genetics, molecular cell biology and physiology
  • Mathematics, biostatistics and statistics
  • Computer science, informatics, computational biology and system biology

Elective areas

  • Genomics, proteomics, metabolomics, microbiome
  • Plant science, animal science, veterinary medicine
  • Biophysics, structural biology, chemical biology, protein engineering, spectroscopy
  • Computational chemistry, cheminformatics, medicinal chemistry and drug design
  • Databases, data analytics, data mining, artificial intelligence and machine learning
  • Data management, data modeling, algorithms and optimization
  • Big data analytics, distributed systems, parallel computing, cloud computing
  • Computer vision, imaging analysis, virtual reality, signal processing and neural networks
  • Clinical and translational sciences
  • Health informatics, electronic medical records, and natural language processing

There is a limit of one 3-credit or less 4xxx level course counted in the total course credits. Graduate credits applied toward a minor field cannot also be applied toward another minor field. Other restrictions may apply, and the student should consult the DGS of the major program.