BIFX 579 Bioinformatics Capstone

Prerequisites: Completion of 18 BIFX credits including a minimum grade of “B-“ in BIFX 504 and in BIFX 552, or permission of the instructor. 

This course provides a practical, hands-on experiential learning opportunity for Bioinformatics MS students and emphasizes experimental design and biological interpretation of results. Students will utilize a wide variety of concepts and skills that they have learned throughout previous courses to complete an original research project from start to finish. Over the course of the semester, students will share their questions and insights during frequent “lab meeting” style presentations, and will work both independently and collaboratively to complete their projects. They will present their work in the form of a well annotated script that contains all of the code necessary to complete the project, a brief paper describing the project in paragraph form, and a final poster presentation of their results. Students are encouraged to collaborate with their employer or an outside laboratory to propose a project to the course instructor during the first week of class. Alternatively, project ideas and data will be provided by the instructor. Computational resources will be provided via the Bioinformatics program’s High-Performance Computing Cluster.