Courses

The Biology of the 21st century has evolved radically from it's mid-20th century self. New technologies have created many powerful means for understanding life and how it works at a molecular scale. These technologies are the core of pharmaceutical drug development programs and the “biotech revolution,” but the data they produce can be interpreted only with computational analysis. Bioinformatics is a field developed explicitly to gather, analyze, interpret, and visualize this data so that informed scientific observations can be made on large biological datasets with complex and subtle trends. This course is an integrative experience for undergraduate and graduate BioEngineering and Computing students that explores tightly interdisciplinary methods, science, and outcomes of a field that has enabled high throughput technologies to change the face of biological and medical science as we know it.

Software is transforming the world, and programming is becoming an essential part of many emerging careers. 70 percent of all new jobs across all STEM fields will be in computer science. Some of these careers involve full time programming, but many more require a facility with software systems or part time programming. This class is an introduction to programming designed especially for people who use computers, but have no programming experience. Using the Java programming language, we introduce students to the basics of software development, software problem solving, and, crucially, to the process of debugging.

Solving problems at the leading edge of medical and industrial technologies depends, in many cases, on improving our understanding of protein function. For example, the debilitating side effects of cancer treatment could be reduced by developing drug molecules that selectively fit the unique structures of cancer proteins. In this case, and in many others, protein shape can yield many deep insights into how proteins function. This course is an exploration, through collaborative and interdisciplinary projects, of the biological, computational, and statistical ideas developed for protein structure alignment, finding functional sites, structure-function inference, molecular surfaces, and evolution in protein structure.

The human genome was just the beginning. New experimental technologies are still transforming medicine and biology. One day, inexpensive genome sequencing will isolate pre-cancerous tissue before it becomes a risk, cryoelectron microscopy will reveal the intricate structures of molecular complexes, and microarray technologies will uncover a systematic picture of gene expression in heath and disease. This transformation is possible only through the emerging science of informatics, which gathers, integrates, analyzes and visualizes the new wealth of biological data to make informed decisions. Through informatics, patient histories can be analyzed; drugs can be designed; genomes can be assembled. With these fundamental innovations and those on the horizon, it remains unclear how careers in science, especially medicine, will change as a result. This course, which expands on topics featured in “Bioscience in the 21st century”, will discuss the informatics revolution and its impact on science, ethics, and careers in medicine and biology.