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Degree
Programs
A
PhD or Master's degree with a bioinformatics
concentration is available through one of the following
three departments at Old Dominion University: Computer
Science, Biological Sciences, and Mathematics and
Statistics. Faculty contacts for the three departments
are: Prof.
Alex
Pothen
(Computer Science)
Prof.
Chris Osgood
(Biology)
Prof
N.
Rao Chaganty
(Mathematics and Statistics)
There
are multiple educational routes to productive careers in
bioinformatics and computational biology, but each
requires mastery of one particular subdiscipline among
the three disciplines of Biology, Math and Stat, or CS;
plus a broad understanding of the principles and
practice in the other two areas. Hence we have chosen to
let students in bioinformatics choose a home department
in any one of the three areas, while requiring them to
take courses in the other two areas needed for the
breadth and mastery of this multi-disciplinary
science.
This
choice is a recognition of the fact that we have
students in each of the three departments who wish to
obtain Ph.D.s in bioinformatics, each bringing the
concepts and tools from their disciplines to
collaboratively solve the interdisciplinary problems of
bioinformatics. Our program, in which students are
primarily based in a single academic department, while
doing course work and interacting with scientists in the
other disciplinary areas achieves the ideal balance of
expertise and breadth of understanding that would be
difficult to achieve through a program that focused on a
degree in the general area of bioinformatics. |
