SO: you want to get your PhD in Computer Science and Study Bioinformatics and Computational Biology

Consider coming to Tufts University! You can read all about the group that Profs. Slonim and Cowen co-direct at https://bcb.cs.tufts.edu

Below, we have more information about other programs, mostly for our own undergraduate and masters students, but feel free to use it if you are not at Tufts and it will also help you.

There are many ways to pursue education in Bioinformatics and Computational Biology. There are programs in Biology departments, Biomedical Engineering departments, Computer Science departments, Mathematics Departments, not to mention Medical Schools. There are also some places that offer Masters or Doctoral degrees directly in a special interdisciplinary program for Bioinformatics and/or Computational Biology: see
http://www.iscb.org/iscb-degree-certificate-programs at www.iscb.org for a nice long listing of such programs.

Whether it's better to get a PhD in a traditional department or in an interdisciplinary program depends on your background and interests. It really depends on two things. First, do you have the background and interest to do well in the courses required in the program? For example, if you enter a CS department, you are typically expected to have at least an undergraduate background in CS and be comfortable developing software (this definitely applies to the Tufts CS and Bioinformatics programs). If you enter a biology department, you are expected to have spent some time as an undergraduate conducting experiments at the bench. In Biomedical Engineering or Genetics departments, the expectations differ again. Because your graduate school experience is so dependent on your research advisor, it is also important to think about the "home" departments of the research advisors you are most excited about working with.

Having said all that, the purpose of this page is to list, specifically, some recommended Computer Science departments (along with their recommended faculty) in North America where you can work in Computational Biology or Bioinformatics.

Deparments and Faculty

• CMU (Faculty: Ziv Bar-Joseph, Dannie Durand, Karl Kingsford, Chris Langmead, Russell Schwartz, Eric Xing )
• Columbia University (Faculty: Itsik Pe'er, and in Biology, Dana Pe'er )
• Dartmouth University (Faculty: Chris Bailey-Kellogg )
• MIT (Faculty: Bonnie Berger (also in Mathematics), Manolis Kellis )
• McGill University (Faculty: Mathieu Blanchette )
• Princeton University (Faculty: Mona Singh and Ben Raphael )
• Rice University (Faculty: Luay Nakhleh )
• Stanford University (Faculty: Serafim Batzoglou )
• Indiana University: (Faculty: Cenk Sahinalp )
• Tufts University (Faculty: Lenore Cowen, Donna Slonim )
• University of Arizona (Faculty: John Kececioglu )
• University of British Columbia (Faculty: Anne Condon )
• UC Berkeley (Faculty: Jennifer Listgarten )
• CalTech: (Faculty: Lior Pachter )
• UC Davis (Faculty: Dan Gusfield )
• UCLA (Faculty: Eleazer Eskin ), Eran Halpern
• UC Riverside (Faculty: Tao Jiang )
• UC San Diego (Faculty: Vineet Bafna, Pavel Pevzner )
• UC Santa Cruz (Faculty: David Haussler, Kevin Karplus )
• University of Maryland (Faculty: Max Leiserson, Mihai Pop )
• UIUC (Faculty: Jian Peng and Tandy Warnow )
• U Toronto (Faculty: Michael Brudno )
• University of Washington (Faculty: Martin Tompa )
• University of Waterloo (Faculty: Dan Brown, Ming Li )
• WashU St. Louis (Faculty: Michael Brent )

Not in a CS dept, would also consider Casey Greene at UPenn through the Graduate Group in Genomics and Computational Biology