The completion of the human genome sequence early in the 21st century marked the beginning of a new era of biological research. Since that time, life sciences research has generated an explosion of big data, with biology becoming an increasingly quantitative science. Computational approaches, in combination with experimental methods, have become essential for generating novel hypotheses, deriving new scientific knowledge, and driving discovery and innovation.
The bioinformatics market is expected to grow to $21B by 2026.Ā As Big Data is pouring out of life sciences research, it is creating ample opportunities for scientists with expertise in bioinformatics, computer science, and related skill sets. Big pharma, biotech, and software companies are clamoring to hire professionals with experience in bioinformatics and the management, analysis, and visualization of huge amounts of biological and health care information.
The University of Delaware’s Bioinformatics Certificate, Masterās, and PhD educational programs aim to train the next generation of researchers and professionals who will play a key role in multi- and interdisciplinary teams, bridging life sciences and computational sciences. The program is administered through its academic home, the Department of Computer & Information Sciences (CIS), and is coordinated by theĀ Center for Bioinformatics & Computational Biology (CBCB). The scientific curriculum is built upon the research and educational strength from departments across the Colleges of Arts & Sciences, Engineering, Agriculture & Natural Resources, Health Sciences, and Earth, Ocean & Environment.
A special feature of the program is the close research collaboration among participating Departments across Colleges. Faculty from the various participating disciplines in these departments allow graduate students to gain research and professional expertise in bioinformatics and computational biology in multi- and interdisciplinary teams.
Another feature of the center is the research support provided through the CBCB Bioinformatics Core Facility, which provides expertise and computational infrastructural support necessary to empower life science and biomedical researchers at UD and our Delaware INBRE partner institutions to pursue lines of research dependent upon application of bioinformatic and data science approaches.Ā Our Core is staffed by a group of bioinformatics scientists, data analysts, and software engineers with broad expertise in bioinformatics, computational biology, data sciences, and scientific software development.Ā Leveraging this expertise, we have developed a series of analytical pipelines addressing a broad range of informatically-enabled approaches in the biomedical and life sciences.Ā The Core extensively leverages the resources, tools, and expertise of our partners at the Delaware Biotechnology institute providing high performance computational resources; theĀ Protein Information Resource to provide enhanced contextual metadata aiding in biological interpretation; and the Data Science Institute to incorporate data management and analytics techniques, including the use of machine learning-based approaches for predictive modeling.