The Bioinformatics Interdepartmental Ph.D. Program is one of ten disciplinary “Home Areas” within the UCLA Graduate Programs in Bioscience (GPB). Home Areas consist of faculty and students with shared interest in research areas and approaches. Each interdepartmental Home Area is aligned with a Ph.D.-granting program. These programs provides in depth, cutting-edge training, and offer access to research with exceptional faculty mentors.
The Bioinformatics Interdepartmental Ph.D. Program offers doctoral training for students interested in undertaking research at the interface of computer science, mathematics, biology and biomedicine to address the fundamental challenges of contemporary data-rich research in biosciences. Our interdisciplinary Ph.D. program consists of an integrated one-year core curriculum, over 50 elective courses, research rotations, and an intensive research experience with one of over 45 faculty mentors from more than 12 departments.
Students within the Bioinformatics Ph.D. program will engage in a Ph.D. project focused on understanding the inherent structure of biological information. Examples of Ph.D. topics for students in the program include
- Research into the genetic determinants of complex human disease, including psychiatric diseases and cancer
- The development of computational methods for the analysis of expression data and the epigenome
- The development of computational methods to reverse engineer gene networks in order to understand or model regulatory control of cellular functions
- The analysis of mass spectrometry data to, for example, understand the connection between protein phosphorylation or metabolism and cancer
- The study of population genetics and evolution
- The development of computational approaches to study and predict protein structure to further our understanding of function
The Bioinformatics program has exceptional resources including core facilities for cutting-edge high-throughput technologies. Bioinformatics students have access to one of the largest computer grids in the country. At UCLA, the schools of Medicine, Engineering, Life Sciences, Mathematical and Physical Sciences, and Public Health are all housed on a single campus, making collaborations across disciplines seamless.
The Bioinformatics Interdepartmental Ph.D. Program provides financial support for the students enrolled in the program.