346 CATALYZING INQUIRY
ity specifically do not include previous experience in biomedical research; and thus, computer scientists
would be eligible for such a program.^14
10.2.3 Academic Organizations,
Typically, academic research is conducted in departments or in centers that draw on faculty from
multiple departments. The descriptions of the three departments below are simply illustrative and not
exhaustive (no inference should be drawn from the fact that any given department or center is not
included below):
- Cornell University maintains four distinct programs in computational biology, three hosted by a
parent discipline. Biological sciences, computer science, and mathematics all offer concentrations in
computational biology (the math department calls it “mathematical biology”). The only stand-alone
department is the Department of Biological Statistics and Computational Biology (BSCB), a part of the
College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. BSCB was originally the Department of Biometry and Biosta-
tistics, and in 2005, it has six tenure-track faculty (plus two emeritus professors), one nontenure-track
lecturer, and four “adjunct” faculty. There are 2 postdoctoral associates, 26 graduate students, and 65-70
undergraduate students. The department focuses mainly on biological statistics, computational biol-
ogy, and statistical genomics. Research interests of the faculty include statistical genomics, Bayesian
statistics, population genetics, epidemiology, modeling, molecular evolution, and experiment design. - The University of California at Santa Cruz has a Department of Biomolecular Engineering, an
interdisciplinary department that contains research programs in bioinformatics and experimental
systems biology, among others. The bioinformatics program was originally administered by the
computer engineering department. In 2005, the program has nine core tenure-track faculty members,
and one affiliated faculty member. The bioinformatics curriculum includes a core of bioethics, Baye-
sian statistics, molecular biology, biochemistry, computational analysis of proteins, and computa-
tional genomics. Electives are drawn from biology, chemistry, computer science, and applied math-
ematics and statistics. - Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) has offered programs in computational biology (through its
computer science, biology, mathematics, physics, and chemistry departments) since 1989. In 2005,
CMU’s Department of Biological Sciences had 5 faculty involved in both computational biology and
bioinformatics and genomics, proteomics, and systems biology. The department offers a B.S. in compu-
tational biology, which consists largely of a traditional biological curriculum augmented with math,
programming, and computer science classes. In addition, students (B.S. or Ph.D.) can participate in the
interdepartmental Merck Computational Biology and Chemistry Program, which requires students to
have a home department in biology, computer science, statistics, math, or chemistry. This program was
established in 1999 with a grant from the Merck Company Foundation.
Centers are often created without specific departmental affiliation because the number of depart-
ments that might plausibly contribute expertise is large. In these instances, absent a center, it is difficult
to unify and coordinate research and educational activities or to convey to the outside world what the
university is doing in the area. Centers are intended to be focal points for research at the BioComp
interface (most often with a bioinformatics or computational biology flavor), and they usually work
with departments to make new faculty appointments and provide a single point for students to learn
about university programs.
Four university-based centers are described below, simply as illustrative:
(^14) For more information, see http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/pa-files/PA-00-131.html.