MS in Computer Science - Computational Biology

The Computational Biology Track is intended for students who wish to develop working knowledge of computational techniques and their applications to biomedical research. Recent advances in high-throughput technologies, e.g., for DNA sequencing and for measuring RNA expression via DNA microarrays, are changing the nature of biomedical research. They empower fundamental new understandings of biological mechanisms with far reaching applications to biological and medical sciences. To fulfill this promise, new computational techniques are needed to analyze genome sequences, protein structures, metabolic and regulatory pathways, evolutionary patterns and the genetic basis of disease. The computational-biology track seeks to provide state of the art understanding of this concomitant growth of high-throughput experimental techniques, computational techniques to analyze their data, the resulting new understandings of biological mechanisms and their applications to pharmacological and medical practice (from diagnosis to drug design).