Nathan Johnson currently pursuing a PhD in bioinformatics. His dissertation work involves exploring the impact alternative splicing has on complex genetic disorders by utilizing RNA-Seq data.
Common Searches:
From sequencing the human genome to modeling living organisms, biology has gone digital, and WPI’s Bioinformatics & Computational Biology (BCB) program is at the forefront of this digital revolution.
Bioinformatics involves the collection, management, and analysis of biological data; Computational Biology is the development of quantitative models of biological systems. While many schools offer BCB as a concentration within a traditional Biology program, WPI’s program comprises three academic departments: Biology, Computer Science, and Mathematics.
Our program’s diverse environment encourages a collaborative mindset and access to a broad range of resources that promote creative solutions to pressing scientific questions. Undergraduate and graduate students work alongside expert faculty researchers to use cutting-edge, quantitative techniques to increase our understanding of biology and translate this knowledge into meaningful solutions.
A message from Elizabeth F. Ryder
Director, Bioinformatics & Computational Biology
We designed WPI’s BCB Program to educate students to feel comfortable in the language, concepts, and techniques of three distinct disciplines: biology, mathematics, and computer science. We also developed courses that overlap two or more of these disciplines, each centered on different aspects of the theories, concepts, techniques, and tools of bioinformatics and computational biology. This interdisciplinary training is exciting and rewarding, and allows students many opportunities to tackle challenging biological problems.
WPI Graduate Student Impresses at Dublin Conference
BCB graduate student Alyssa Tsiros won an honorable mention at the Symposium on Biological Data Visualization in Dublin, Ireland, for her biovisualization depicting the evolution of noncoding RNA in the Human accelerated region 1, a recently discovered gene that may be responsible for the accelerated brain development of humans compared to other mammals. Tsoris’s project stood out for effectively using color-coded arc diagrams to depict genetic data.
Career Outlook
With their robust cross-disciplinary knowledge and hands-on project experiences, BCB graduates are well prepared for rewarding careers across a wide variety of industries. Our graduates assume leadership roles in positions in federal and state government, higher education, research and development, and the pharmaceutical industry. The average starting salary in 2015 was $66,500.