Bioinformatics, Certificate
Program Director: Miranda Darby, Ph.D., darby@hood.edu; 301-696-3650
The Bioinformatics Certificate is designed particularly for students who have a background in biotechnology, biomedical science or the life sciences, either through formal study or professional experience. The certificate introduces foundational areas of bioinformatics: utilization of public databases and applications, data mining, programming, applied statistics, and analysis of genomic, proteomic and modeling data, as well an integrative capstone course in which students will coalesce and synthesize the skills that they have developed in the foundational courses to analyze and interpret primary data to answer a biological question.
Application Requirements
Students wishing to enter the program must demonstrate their previous education in the biological sciences in one of three ways: 1) a completed undergraduate degree with a minimum GPA of 2.75 in biology, molecular biology, or a related field that includes undergraduate coursework in molecular biology, upper level genetics (equivalent to Hood’s BIOL 316) and cell biology (equivalent to Hood’s BIOL 339); or, 2) acceptance into the Biomedical Science program; or 3) completion of a master’s degree (MA or MSc) or Ph.D. in a biology-related field. Students admitted to the certificate program are eligible to switch to the MS in Bioinformatics during their course of study. All coursework can be transferred to the MS in Bioinformatics.
Requirements for the Certificate:
Required
| BIFX 502 | Foundations in Computer Science | 3.0 |
| BIFX 550 | Functional Genomics: Sequence Analysis and Structural Bioinformatics | 3.0 |
| BIFX 551/ITMG 524 | Advanced Data Analytics Programming with R | 3.0 |
| BIFX 552 | Bioinformatics Data Skills | 3.0 |
| BIFX 553 | Applied Data Science for Bioinformatics | 3.0 |
| BIFX 572 | Computational Genomics Practicum | 3.0 |
| Total Credit Hours: | 18.0 |
BIFX 502 may be waived by program director upon admission.