Biology + computer science + mathematics = BIOINFORMATICS
Bioinformatics is an exciting area where biology, computer science, and mathematics meet. The questions studied come from biology and medicine, but they are studied and solved with methods and tools drawn from computer science and mathematics.
Recent technological advances within biology has provided tools that generate huge amounts of data, from sources such as complete genome sequencing, high throughput studies of expression or intermolecular interactions, etc. To be able to draw conclusions from all these data, tools are needed to manage, store, access, analyze, and visualize it. The role of the bioinformatician is at the heart of this process, with a role to develop and apply such tools. The bioinformatician thus needs biological knowledge to know what to do, and computer and mathematics skills to know how to do it.
The Master program in Bioinformatics combines courses where you learn about the questions posed by biomedicine, pharmacology, and evolutionary biology, and the study of DNA/RNA/protein sequence data, molecular structures, gene expression and other kinds of observational data. You will study such things as knowledge-based and learning systems, Markov models and various ways to create heuristic methods, to solve these questions with the data available. View the CHE ranking summary for Bioinformatics here. In addition, here are the CHE ranking criteria and relevant information common to all of our master programmes (as well as for PhD studies).
So who is a bioinformatician?
Today, virtually everyone and anyone, who works with biological problems, have to be a bioinformatician, albeit to a larger or lesser extent. One can divide us into three guilds – the users, the power users, and the developers. Everyone is at least a user; a user applies the available tools and software to solve the biological question. The power user is not satisfied with this; she will modify the tools, create the programmes she needs, and combine elements from other software. The power user still has her main focus on the biological question at hand, and the tools she creates are a direct solution to the specific problem. The developer on the other hand is a specialist problem solver, who produces solutions not only to the specific biological question she is faced with, but to similar problems faced by other biologists; the goal for the developer is to produce bioinformatics tools that the community (e.g., the users guild) can use when needed.
The aim of this Master programme in Bioinformatics is that you as a student should be a well-prepared power user or developer after graduation, and thus be able to both formulate interesting biological questions, and to solve them by applying your computer science knowledge and skills.
