Course description
Programme
Teaching staff are drawn from SBS Institutes as well as from the School of Informatics in Edinburgh. This combination of leading-edge informatics and biological research teams creates a productive interface, providing advanced training in the informatic, bioinformatic and statistical skills that are increasingly required by industry and research.
The programme is constructed round a set of compulsory courses focused on programming skills, statistical analysis and database science as well as bioinformatics. Additional optional courses allow students to specialise in several aspects of bioinformatics, from programme design and implementation to structural biology, systems biology and genomics.
Learning Outcomes
The programme allows students to specialise in particular aspects of bioinformatics and equips them with key core skills, including:
* a working knowledge of a programming language;
* a theoretical and practical grounding in the science of databasing;
* familiarity with the major tools and algorithms of bioinformatics;
* independent research skills, gained through an individual major project;
* essential transferable skills (writing scientific texts, presentations, IT).
On graduation from the programme we expect that students will be able to:
* compete successfully for the best PhD positions and progress immediately to mature PhD research;
* progress to a research assistantship or other post in an academic biological- sciences laboratory, and set up and perform advanced bioinformatics services and research;
* maintain their working knowledge of advanced bioinformatics and apply their skills in either academic or industrial settings.
How You Will Be Taught
The taught portion of the course takes place in the first two semesters (September to April) and includes e-learning and face-to-face lectures, seminars, tutorials and practicals given by staff from both the School of Biological Sciences and the School of Informatics. An array of options offers the opportunity to specialise in several areas, with an emphasis on essential technologies and approaches in biological data analysis.
A major part of the MSc programme is a full-time independent research project (in the second half of the year), based in active research laboratories where emerging skills in bioinformatics can be honed and refined in a real-world situation.
