|
|
Members of BiC are involved in teaching Bioinformatics courses
offered at RPI and organize Bioinformatics
workshops offered through the Chautauqua
Institute.
For students interested in biology, information technology, computer
science, and genetic engineering, a unique and totally relevant curriculum
is being offered. In a world where data is being amassed faster than
it can be analyzed and utilized, there is a great demand for professionals
who can use software to digest the ever-growing mass of information
that flows from research. This is bioinformatics. It is the science
of storing, extracting, organizing, analyzing, interpreting, and utilizing
information. Mining these immense storehouses of data to secure vital
information for research and product development has become a challenge
for the scientific community. The market is calling out for individuals
with this specialization - and Rensselaer is one of a few universities
offering this curriculum on an undergraduate level.
Undergraduate Program
Rensselaer's undergraduate Bioinformatics programs prepare the undergraduate
for admission to graduate or professional school. The philosophy behind
the undergraduate curriculum is to leave as many options as possible
to the student. Generally, students enrolled in the Bioinformatics
program choose to follow either a concentration in Computational Biology
(stressing the computer science portion of the Bioinformatics curriculum),
or Molecular Biology (stressing the Molecular Biology portion of the
Bioinformatics curriculum).
For more information, please visit Undergraduate
Bioinformatics Curriculum page.
Graduate Program
The master's degree program has as its primary goal the education
of students for jobs in biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, and related
industry sectors. The professional Master of Science in Applied Science
program with a concentration in bioinformatics is intended for those
students who wish to upgrade their skills while employed in industry.
The Master of Science in Biology with a concentration in bioinformatics
may be attractive to those who wish to obtain an M.S. degree before
proceeding to professional study in medicine or an allied health field,
or to those students who have a B.S. Degree in biological sciences
and who wish to prepare for eventual entry into a doctoral program
at Rensselaer or elsewhere. It is possible to enter the doctoral program
in Biology with a concentration in bioinformatics.
For more information on doctoral programs in Biology, please follow
this
link.
Please visit the Graduate
Education Home page for general information about Master's and
Doctoral programs at Rensselaer.
Certificate Programs
Rensselaer offers graduate certificates to students who successfully
complete an identified four-course sequence in a specific area. Certificate
programs are available in Bioinformatics.
Please follow this
link for general information about Certificate Programs at Rensselaer.
Facilities
RPI has a Bioinformatics Laboratory. It was constructed with a grant
from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and is equipped with 20
Silicon Graphics workstations, distance delivery apparatus, and audiovisual
equipment. It is connected via a high speed network to local Challenger
and Origin 2000 servers, and provides local access to high speed RAID
drives for searches of the most generally important biological sequence
and structure databases. Available software includes some of the most
powerful and generally used searching, sequence alignment, and analysis
software, accessible through GCG seqlab and other formats, as well
as molecular visualization, modeling, and dynamics packages from Molecular
Simulations. Available software includes Vector NTI and Tripos packages.
top
|
| |
|
