Advisors
Each graduate student in the Bioinformatics and Systems Biology Graduate Program will work on a dissertation project under dual mentorship, consisting of a primary advisor who is Program Training Faculty, and a co-advisor who may or may not be Program Training Faculty, but must be from a different disciplinary area. One advisor should have a primarily computational research focus, the other a primarily experimental research focus.
Appointment of the Doctoral Committee
Prior to the Advancement to Candidacy Examination, each student, in consultation with his or her faculty advisors, will establish a dissertation committee of five faculty members. The advisor will be the Committee Chair and the co-advisor will be the Co-Chair. The Doctoral Committee should comprise a minimum of five faculty members and of these, at least three, including the Committee Chair, must be members of the BISB program. If all members are from the program, then two must have a different home department than the Committee Chair, and one of these two must be tenured. The dissertation advisors will have the major responsibility for the student's research and dissertation.
There are additional campus-wide policies concerning who can serve on your committee. Your committee must satisfy both the BISB Graduate Program policies stated above as well as the campus-wide policies on these sites:
Once you have discussed your committee with your research advisor, send it to the BISB Graduate Program Coordinator at least 3 weeks before the time you expect to take the “Senate” Exam. You cannot take the “Senate” Exam until GEPA approves your committee. When the committee is approved, you will receive an email notification to review the official approval letter on the Graduate Student Portal. If you have not received your committee approval by one week before the exam, please contact the Graduate Coordinator.
If you need to change your advisor, coadvisor, or the membership of your committee, please contact the BISB Graduate Coordinator and Program Director. If it's after your committee is approved, then also see Reconstitution of a Doctoral or Master's Committee.