Bioinformatics

www.bioinformatics.uiuc.edu

Graduate College
204 Coble Hall
801 South Wright Street
Champaign, IL 61820-6210
Phone: (217) 333-0035
Fax: (217) 333-8019
E-mail: grad@uiuc.edu

Major: Bioinformatics
Degrees Offered: M.S.
Graduate Concentrations: Animal Sciences, Crop Sciences, Library and Information Science, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Computer Science

Graduate Degree Programs

The Bioinformatics program at the University of Illinois is an interdisciplinary program with many participating departments. Currently students can earn the Master of Science in Bioinformatics with a concentration in one of the following departments: Animal Sciences, Crop Sciences, Library and Information Science, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Computer Science. The degree is granted by the Graduate College, but students are also members of the department of their concentration. The program is overseen by the Bioinformatics Steering Committee of the Graduate College.

Admission

Applicants must hold a bachelor’s degree equivalent to that granted by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The recommended background for graduate students entering the Bioinformatics degree program is a bachelor’s or master’s degree in life sciences, computer and mathematical sciences, or engineering, with a minimum of five hours of molecular and cell biology, six hours of general chemistry, nineteen hours of mathematics and statistics, and three hours of introduction to computing. Prerequisites vary somewhat for the different departmental concentrations. Students should view the web page of the specific department they wish to apply to for detailed information about admission criteria. Those departmental links are below:

Pending final administrative approvals, the following additional concentrations are expected to become available in Spring 2008, but students may apply now:

Degree Requirements–Master of Science

The M.S. degree can be taken in a thesis or non-thesis format, depending on the department. For either format, the research adviser must be affiliated with the Bioinformatics program.

For the thesis option, a minimum of 32 hours are required, including a minimum of 28 hours of course work. Thesis credit must count for at least 4 hours, but cannot exceed 8 hours applied toward the degree.

For the non-thesis option, a minimum of 36 hours are required. Non thesis programs must require students to participate in a research experience supervised by a faculty member.

For either option, at least 12 hours must be taken at the advanced graduate level (500 level). In addition, a minimum of one four-hour course, approved for degree credit, from each of three core bioinformatics areas is required:

Fundamental bioinformatics (courses in genomics, proteomics, bioinformatics, and computational biology).
Biology (courses in general biochemistry and cell biology).
Computer Science (courses in database systems and combinatorial algorithms).

Facilities

University research centers in this area include the Center for Biophysics and Computational Biology and an NIH Resource for Macromolecular Modeling and Bioinformatics. The campus also offers state-of-the-art experimental bioinformatics facilities, including those in the Keck Center for Comparative and Functional Genomics and the $75 million, 186,000 square feet Institute for Genomic Biology. The National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), located at the University, offers opportunities for accessing, developing, and experimenting with state-of-the-art computational facilities for bioinformatics.

Financial Aid

Fellowships, research assistantships, and teaching assistantships (all of which include tuition and partial fee waivers) are awarded on a competitive basis by the admitting department. All applicants, regardless of U.S. citizenship, whose native language is not English and who wish to be considered for teaching assistantships (the most common form of financial aid for new graduate students in the department) must submit a score of at least 50 on the Test of Spoken English (TSE).