Starting next fall, students at Texas A&M will be able to enroll in a new major in the College of Arts and Sciences: a bachelor of science in bioinformatics.
Directed by associate professor Yuchao Jiang, Ph.D., this new program will aim to bridge biology and statistics, creating a unique path for students in STEM fields to follow.
“Bioinformatics is an interdisciplinary field that combines biology, computer science, statistics and mathematics to analyze and interpret biological data … and predict biological systems,” professor and Director of the Center for Statistical Bioinformatics Bani K. Mallick said.
This new degree program will aim to help students grasp “biological, genetic and genomic principles,” and become proficient in “data analytics and computation,” as outlined by the program’s mission statement and requirements.
“Biology and statistics were always in the same college, but with that merger, there was the recognition that we could provide an exceptional product to students if we taught in interdisciplinary ways,” professor and Biology Department Head Alex Keene said.
Keene elaborated that both the biology and statistics departments understand distinct parts of the bioinformatics field and that their merging brings both pieces of the puzzle to A&M students.
Bioinformatics already has a presence at A&M in the form of a minor that only provides students with a few opportunities to study subjects that tie together the disciplines of biology and data analysis.
More opportunities will be provided to students through the 120 total hours requirement of the
degree plan for the new bioinformatics program. This includes the bioinformatics cornerstone course and the bioinformatics capstone course, which will give students an introduction to the bioinformatics field.
“Cornerstone is a 1-credit hour, writing-intensive class to get students into the field to gain some exposure in bioinformatics during their sophomore year,” Jiang said. “Capstone is really sort of the class where they get their hands dirty: They have real-world data analysis experiences that try to equip them for whatever comes after they graduate from this program.”
Following graduation, Keene said there are many opportunities for bioinformatics students to capitalize on, such as attending professional school, going into academia or research, working for biotech startups and even pharmaceutical and genomics companies.
“Genomics is a really emerging field,” Keene said. “We can now look at gene expression in single cells and sequence hundreds and thousands of genes … and the applications are even more powerful. You can see that with 23andMe or Ancestry.com that can predict disease susceptibility or identify lost relatives.”
Studying bioinformatics will also prepare students for fields not directly related to data collection and analysis, according to Mallick.
“It is an excellent field for premedical students, as medical schools increasingly seek applicants with strong numerical and computational training in biology,” Mallick said.
The American Medical Association builds on this by explaining how post-graduate schools, such as medical schools, dental schools or doctor of osteopathic medicine schools, look for students with sharp critical thinking and analysis skills.
These are among the skills that will be honed by the bioinformatics major at Texas A&M through courses required on the degree plan, such as STAT 315: Computational Data Science and GENE 301: Comprehensive Genetics.
For neuroscience sophomore Vanessa Vazhappilly, this new and robust degree offers a sense of security for students unsure of exactly what they want to pursue after their undergraduate education.
“Honestly, I think it’s a complicated major but probably a good one to add, because, if you’re considering pre-med, but are on the fence, you have a backup for if you don’t end up wanting to do medicine,” Vazhappilly said.
Jiang pointed out that students interested in professional development across multiple disciplines can even consider adding this new program as a double major if they don’t want to totally deviate from their current educational plans.
“We have made the curriculum flexible enough for students to do so, and actually, we spent a lot of effort trying to tweak the program requirements, and we really think that given the increasing demand and the rapid development of bioinformatics in general,” Jiang said. It is going to be a very popular and very beneficial program for students to go into.”