The scientific advances that led to the sequencing of the human genome
underscore the necessity to combine the scholarly approaches derived
from classical fields such as genetics with those rapidly developing
fields in the arena of genomics. Indeed, each of the NIH Institutes
has identified a national need to develop institutional training
programs in the scientific disciplines at the interface of biological
and genomic
sciences. The ultimate objective of these efforts is to train scientists
to take full advantage of the publicly available genomic data to
make rapid and ingenious advances in biomedical research. Bringing
these
combined approaches to the practice of modern science and medicine
will have an enormous impact on shaping the development of new fields,
but before this can occur, the specialized disciplines need to be
introduced into a framework in which they are juxtaposed. Scientists
with expertise
in genetic methods, molecular problems, and computational approaches
must interact in productive ways and train a new generation of scientists
to utilize cross-disciplinary tools in scientific research.
The graduate program in the Department of Genetics
and Genomics aims to bring scientists in these fields together
in an atmosphere
of intellectual endeavor. The Program is designed to catalyze
collaborations among faculty members with seemingly disparate
research interests
and allow students to take part in this multidisciplinary
discovery. These
compound approaches will be standard methodology in the
future, and it is our goal to train our students to utilize
these methods to
think broadly about scientific problems. We will teach
our students to apply
the approaches of classical genetics and modern genomics
to investigations of the heritable basis of numerous biological
traits, the relationships
among genes, the regulation of their expression, and the
molecular basis of genetic diseases. We encourage you to
use this CD and our
web site to further explore
the details of our Graduate Program in Genetics and Genomics.
If you should have
any additional questions, please feel free to contact:
Shoumita
Dasgupta
Assistant Professor and Director of Graduate Studies
Department of Genetics and Genomics
715 Albany Street, E-628
Boston, MA 02118
(617) 414-1580
dasgupta@bu.edu
