Doctor of Philosophy in Biology - Microbiology

University of Waterloo

The Department of Biology offers thesis based graduate training at both the M.Sc. (Master of Science) and Ph.D. (Doctor of Philosophy) levels. In both programs students are required to take courses. Normally, these courses are selected from the Biology listings, but you may take a course from any department on campus, or from other universities, provided that it is approved for credit by your advisory committee. At least two of the required courses must come from within the Biology Department listings. All our programs require that graduate students take the Graduate Academic Integrity Module. This is an online course that must be completed within the first 8 weeks of your first term and will be listed on your transcript. You will be contacted by the Integrity Office to complete this online module. This is not the same as the Academic Integrity Workshop, which is also required. Research in Bioinformatics includes studies of protein folding and dynamics, DNA and protein sequence analysis techniques, and modeling of evolution and ecosystems. Much of modern evolutionary biology involves computational analyses of genome sequences. The area of systematics (traditionally taxonomy) is now also heavily reliant on bioinformatics analysis.