The BIT graduate and postdoctoral fellow training program is coordinated with existing graduate degree programs in five Schools. The BIT Program, administered by the campus-wide Institute for Genomics and Bioinformatics (IGB), provides in-depth training to students and postdoctoral fellows in either computational or life sciences, along with working competence in the cross-discipline. The BIT Program offers its predoctoral and postdoctoral trainees courses from a menu designed to ensure that, in addition to in-depth training in their primary field of expertise, each trainee obtains a set of core skills related to programming, and database development, statistics and data mining, computer modeling of biological systems, molecular biology and biochemistry.
The current research and training focus of the BIT Program is translational bioinformatics with a long-term vision of genome-enabled medicine. This vision is realized by integrating traditional campus strengths in computational biology approaches with campus strengths in the ‘omic’ sciences and systems biology into the practice of personalized medicine. This transition from traditional to translational medicine practice is occurring in parallel with, and is being catalyzed by, major events occurring on the UCI campus, including the continuing development and expansion of the UCI Genomics High-Throughput Facility, under the administration and direction of the IGB; the establishment of the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences and the Center for Drug Design and Development, and the recent receipt of an NIH Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) to the UCI School of Medicine.
The UCI BIT Program, now in its 10th year of existence, consists of 34 predoctoral and 8 postdoctoral students, of which 18 predoctoral positions are supported by the NIH training grant from the National Library of Medicine. This campus-wide interdisciplinary training program integrates its activities with degree granting graduate programs in the Schools of Information and Computer Sciences (ICS), Biological Sciences (BIO), Medicine (SOM), Physical Sciences (PS), and Engineering (ENG). Students in these campus graduate programs spend their first year fulfilling the first year requirements of the respective programs and, upon nomination by a IGB/BIT Program faculty trainer, are considered for acceptance into the BIT Program starting in their second year. This has proven to be an effective method for the establishment of a selective, campus-wide, interdisciplinary training program of highly qualified students on the UCI campus. In addition, the BIT program accepts nominations from two first-year Gateway Programs, described below, the Mathematical and Computational Biology Gateway Program (MCB) and the Medicinal Chemistry and Pharmacology Gateway Program (MCP).
The Biomedical Informatics Training (BIT) Program. EG, Evolutionary Genetics track in Ecology & Evolutionary Biology Dept.; CMB, Combined Cellular & Molecular Biosciences Program in the School of Biological Sciences and the School of Medicine; MSTP, Medical Scientist Training Program; CB, Chemical Biology track in Chemistry Dept.; ChaMP, Chemical and Material Physics Program; IBAM, Informatics in Biology and Medicine track in Computer Science Dept; BME, Biomedical Engineering Program. While the BIT Program normally admits student at the beginning of their second year, BIT also recruits and admits students through two first-year gateway programs, the Mathematical and Computational Biology (MCB) Gateway Program and the Medicinal Chemistry and Pharmacology (MCP) Gateway Program.
*For more information on the BIT Program please contact Janet Ko at 949-824-9979, or send e-mail to: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it