Course Requirements (2014-15)

See Also BMI 2014-15

Curriculum Overview

Course Descriptions

Sample Schedules

BMI in UCSD Catalog

 

See here for a list of projected course offerings for 2014-15.

Core Requirements for the Biomedical Informatics Track

Each student in the Biomedical Informatics Track must take the four courses below.

All required Core and Elective courses for the degree must be taken for a letter grade. Students must obtain a “B” or better in courses taken for the degree. If you receive a “B-” or lower in a Core or Elective class, or you take it on S/U grading, it does not fulfill your requirements. Please see the Grades FAQ if you have any grades of “B-” or lower or “U”.

Seminars

All students in years 1-2 must take the Colloquium for their track in fall, winter, and spring quarters.

All students in years 1-2 must take the Student Research Talks in fall, winter, and spring quarters.

All students must take one of the two ethics courses, SOMI 226 or BIOM 219, by the end of the second year. However, funding sources may require that it be taken the first year, so we recommend taking it the first year.

Special registration procedure: Students must register for the ethics course both via TritonLink as well as via the registration form on ethics.ucsd.edu. The course is taken by many UCSD employees (not just students), so the Ethics Program uses its own registration form. Registration on TritonLink is necessary for students to receive course credit.

Research and Teaching Requirements

During the academic year, all students must be enrolled in the appropriate research course for their level. Students typically do three rotations in year 1 (BNFO 298) and then do research units (BNFO 299) with their thesis advisor in years 2 and later. BNFO 299 units may be varied to meet the full-time enrollment requirement of 12 units per quarter in fall, winter, and spring. During the summer, students are expected to do research as well, but should not enroll in BNFO 298 or BNFO 299. During all quarters and the summer, students are responsible for satisfying program requirements including proposals, reports, presentations, committee meetings, notifying the graduate coordinator when joining/changing labs, etc.; the only difference is that students do not enroll in BNFO 298 or BNFO 299 in the summer. In addition, each student will make periodic research presentations to the graduate program students/faculty. Students will also discuss their progress at the annual program meeting to be held each year.

All students must serve as a teaching assistant (TA) for at least two quarters. Students should enroll in BNFO 500 (Teaching Experience) or an equivalent course code in another department, during each quarter in which they are a teaching assistant. A typical teaching assistantship is 110 hours/quarter (25% load, 2 units of BNFO 500); however, this varies by class. 220 hours/quarter is a 50% load, 4 units.

Program Electives

Each student in the Biomedical Informatics track will select 16 units of Elective Courses from four distinct Elective Fields (BIO, CS, SB, BMI) delineated below, with at least 4 units from the CS series and 8 units from the BMI series.

It is the general policy of the program to be as adaptable as possible to the needs of the individual student. The curriculum committee is receptive to students petitioning to satisfy an Elective requirement by taking a course not listed among the Electives.

Elective BIO-1: Biochemistry

Elective BIO-2: Molecular Genetics

Elective BIO-3: Cell Biology

Elective CS-1: Algorithms

Elective CS-2: Machine Learning and Data Mining

Elective CS-3: Mathematics and Statistics

Elective SB-1: Biological Systems

Elective SB-2: Kinetic Modeling

Elective BMI-1: Biomedical Informatics