*(added 12/2008) Bioinformatics students may substitute required graduate seminar courses with non-seminar courses, with permission from the department. The purpose of this is to provide students with more opportunities to take quantitative courses in the CS or Math departments.
Note that opportunities for cross-enrollment also exist within the Boston-Area Consortium (Boston University, Brandeis, and Tufts). Graduate students in Arts & Sciences are eligible to cross-register for one course per semester during the academic year (not including summer sessions). Cross Registration forms can be picked up at the Associate Dean's office in McGuinn 221.
(Previous amendments from Feb 2008)
1. Currently, biology Ph.D. students are required to take four core graduate courses (not including graduate bioinformatics): genetics, molecular biology, cell biology, and biochemistry. Because occasionally bioinformatics students enter with a predominantly computational/mathematical background, bioinformatics students with weaker biology training will have the option to take two of these courses at the undergraduate level instead, with department permission. Students with sufficient biology background are recommended to take the standard graduate core courses. Bioinformatics students must complete the four core courses, with the two potential substitutions, by the end of the second year.
2. In certain cases, a first year bioinformatics student may not have undergraduate experience suited to TAing a non-bioinformatics biology course. Such students will be given preference to TA one of: the intro bioinformatics courses (BI420 and BI616), Biostatistics (BI330), Computational Foundations of Bioinformatics (BI424), or Molecular Evolution (BI561). Bioinformatics students beyond the first year will be expected to be competent to TA other biology courses.
3. Some entering bioinformatics graduate students have already taken courses equivalent to the graduate bioinformatics core course. In such cases, decided on a case-by-case basis, the student will be allowed to substitute an upper level Bioinformatics, CS, Math, or Statistics course.
4.Bioinformatics graduate students are allowed to substitute up to three of the five graduate biology elective (non-core) courses with upper level CS, Math, or Statistics courses.