18.418 New Format!

Summary

This seminar course covers current research topics in computational biology and is designed to help students stay abreast of current trends in the field. Speakers from academia and industry will present recent research papers from leading journals and conferences. Topic areas include original research (both theoretical and experimental) in genomics, molecular sequence analysis, protein and RNA structure, drug design, transcriptomics, computational epidemiology and medical informatics. This is an H-level course.

Requirements

There are no formal requirements for this course. Participants should have a basic understanding of biology and statistics. The course staff will provide the necessary guidance and supplementary material to ensure that the students understand the presentations. There is no programming requirement for this course, and there is no final exam.

Coursework

The coursework for this class is designed to help students understand and critically evaluate the presented research.

Short Weekly Assignment

Each week, participants will be required to critically read the research paper that corresponds to the guest speaker's presentation. Students will also be required to hand in a brief summary of the paper outlining the problem statement, data, methods, and results that were presented.

Student Presentations

Monday class meetings will revolve around two student presentations. The two students assigned to a given week will be asked to each prepare a 20 minute presentation either supporting the methods and results reported in the previous week's paper, or presenting alternative interpretations of the research. The remaining students will be asked to come prepared with questions for both presenters.

Time & Location

Class Meeting Time: Monday & Wednesday 11:30 - 1:00. We meet in two different classrooms. On Mondays, the class is in 56-180, and on Wednesdays, it is in 32-G575 (Gates Tower of the Stata Center)