Bioinformatics and Systems Biology MSc
Overview
Bioinformatics has been an identifiable discipline for more than a decade, driven by the computational demands of high volumes of biological data. It incorporates both the development and application of algorithms to decipher biological relationships. Enormous success has been achieved, for example in defining homologous families of sequences at the DNA, RNA, and protein levels. However, our appreciation of function is changing rapidly as experimental analysis scales up to cellular and organismal viewpoints. At these levels, we are interested in the properties of a network of interacting components in a system, as well as the components themselves. The concepts or Systems Biology and Bioinformatics complement each other, and both are addressed in this course. This combination reflects the current skills sought in academic and industrial (e.g. pharmaceutical) settings. An important feature is the extent to which computational biology is concerned with finding patterns in biological data, and generating hypotheses that feed back into experiments.
You will be based in the top-rated Faculty of Life Sciences at The University of Manchester. Teaching is delivered by more than 10 academic staff working in the fields of Bioinformatics, Genomics and Systems Biology, representing the breadth and depth of these areas across faculties.
Careers
Graduates acquire a wide range of subject specific and transferable skills and gain extensive research experience. Around half of each class find PhD positions straight after the MSc, whilst others build upon their training to enter careers in biology and IT. The combination of Systems Biology and Bioinformatics addressed in this course reflects the current skills sought in academic and industrial (e.g. pharmaceutical) settings.
Employers of our recent graduates include: Health Protection Agency, AstraZeneca, NHS and universities in the UK and abroad.
For postgraduate profiles, see: Keith Bradnam ¦ Andrew Cawley ¦ Dr Karen Eilbeck ¦ Martin Gerner ¦ Richard Jackson