Concurrent with its name change in 2001, the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering led the development of the Bioinformatics M.S. degree program at the University of Illinois. The program is unique in that it involves five departments and schools that are offering concentrations of the campus-wide Bioinformatics M.S. degree that is administered by the Graduate College. The departmental concentration aims to ensure that students receive training in systems biology as well as laboratory techniques that emphasize the interplay between experimental and computational bioinformatics.
Degree requirements
Students entering this degree program through the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering department must be admitted by the department and subsequently satisfy the campus-wide Bioinformatics M.S. degree requirements as well as departmental requirements.
The campus-wide degree is offered in both thesis and non-thesis options. For the thesis option, a minimum of 32 hours are required, including a minimum of 28 hours of course work (the standard one-semester graduate course at the University of Illinois is a four-hour course). For the non-thesis option, a minimum of 36 hours are required. For either option, at least 12 hours must be taken at the advanced graduate level. In addition, a minimum of 12 hours must be taken from courses approved for degree credit in each of three core bioinformatics areas:
- 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).
Courses that satisfy these requirements are listed
here.
In addition to the above campus-wide requirements, students that enter the program through the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering are required to take:
- CHBE 572: Metabolic systems engineering (four hours);
- CHBE 580: Laboratory techniques in bioinformatics (two hours).
Prerequisites
The minimal undergraduate background needed to enter the core courses of the program is:
- Five hours of molecular and cell biology;
- Nine hours of general and organic undergraduate chemistry;
- Nineteen hours of mathematics and statistics;
- Three hours of introduction to computing.
An additional four hours in data structures and software principles are highly recommended. Students with a B.S. in Chemical Engineering normally have the minimum background needed to enter the core courses. Students from other engineering disciplines typically come with only eight hours of undergraduate chemistry, in which case they will be required to take an organic chemistry course before they enter the core courses. In general, students entering the program must ensure that they satisfy these prerequisites or take remedial courses.
Financial support
No financial support is provided to students in this program.
Apply to this program
