Phillip Compeau, PhD, Director
Tara Seman, Academic Coordinator

Minor in Computational Biology

SCS Majors: Please see the Computational Biology Concentration

The computational biology minor is open to students in any major of any college at Carnegie Mellon outside the School of Computer Science. The curriculum and course requirements are designed to maximize the participation of students from diverse academic disciplines. The program seeks to produce students with both basic computational skills and knowledge in biological sciences that are central to computational biology.

Students are encouraged to declare the minor as early as possible in their undergraduate careers and in all cases before their final semester so that the minor advisor can provide advice on their curriculum.

Why Minor in Computational Biology?

Computational Biology is concerned with solving biological and biomedical problems using mathematical and computational methods. It is recognized as an essential element in modern biological and biomedical research. There have been fundamental changes in biology and medicine over the past two decades due to spectacular advances in high throughput data collection for genomics, proteomics and biomedical imaging. The resulting availability of unprecedented amounts of biological data demands the application of advanced computational tools to build integrated models of biological systems, and to use them to devise methods of prevent or treat disease. Computational Biologists inhabit and expand the interface of computation and biology, making them integral to the future of biology and medicine.

Curriculum

The minor in computational biology requires a total of five courses: 3 core courses, 1 biology elective, and 1 computational biology elective, for a total of at least 45 units.

Prerequisites

Students must take two courses as prerequisites from the following:		Units
One of:
03-151	Honors Modern Biology	10
03-121	Modern Biology	9
and one of:
02-120	Programming for Scientists	12
15-112	Fundamentals of Programming and Computer Science	12
15-110	Principles of Computing	10

Core Classes

Students must take two from the following courses:
One of:
02-250	Introduction to Computational Biology	12
02-180 & 02-181	Great Ideas in Computational Biology I and Great Ideas in Computational Biology II *	10
*02-251 is allowed if 02-180 and 02-181 are not offered
One of:
02-261	Quantitative Cell and Molecular Biology Laboratory (03-343 Experimental Techniques in Molecular Biology may be substituted for 02-261 with permission of the minor advisor; 03-116 may be used to replace 02-261 if and only if the latter is not offered)	Var.
02-262	Computation and Biology Integrated Research Lab	Var.

Electives

Three computational biology electives (02-XXX) at the 300 level or higher.

Policy on Double Counting

No more than two courses may be double counted with your major's core requirements. Courses in the minor may not be counted towards another SCS minor. Consult the minor advisor for more information.