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).

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.

Bioinformatics and Molecular Biology

A unique and totally relevant curriculum for students interested in biology, information technology, computer science, and genetic engineering.

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.

Some courses

• ALGORITHMS IN COMPUTATIONAL MOLECULAR BIOLOGY
  String algorithms; including finite state machines, suffix trees, hash tables and biosequence alignment algorithms. Statistics of sequence comparisons. PAM theroy and general log-odds scoring systems. Phylogenetic reconstruction and Hidden Markov Models.
• BIOINFORMATICS I
  Networks, sequence database and alignment theory, phylogenetics, and secondary structure predictions and DNA analysis.
• BIOINFORMATICS II
  Biomolecular structure, dynamics and function, protein motifs, modeling and analysis of 3-D macromolecular structures.
• DRUG DISCOVERY
  Applying bioinformatics and genomics to the discovery of synthetic molecules to treat human disease.
• MOLECULAR BIOLOGY II
  Provides an in-depth examination of molecular mechanisms involved with gene regulation and recent advances in genetic engineering.

Involved Faculty

Curt M. Breneman, Ph. D. (UC Santa Barbara), Associate Professor,
Chemistry

Christopher Bystroff, Ph. D. (University of California, San Diego),
Assistant Professor

Charles (Chip) Lawrence, Ph. D. (Cornell University), Wadsworth Center,
Research Professor in Computer Science at RPI

John C. Salerno, Ph. D. (University of Pennsylvania), Professor,
Chairman of Biology Deoartment

Susan M.E. Smith, Ph. D. (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute), Clinical
Assistant Professor, Biology

Mark P. Wentland, Ph. D. (Rice University), Professor, Chemistry

Mohammed J. Zaki, Ph. D. (University of Rochester), Assistant
Professor in Computer Science

Michael Zuker, Ph. D. (Massachusetts Institute of Technology),
Mathematical Sciences, Adjunct in Biology

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.