Curriculum
The design of this BSc (Bioinformatics) curriculum recognises the wide spectrum of personal interest and diversity in career aspiration of a modern bioinformatics practitioner, ranging from biomedical researchers who are skilled at performing analyse with bioinformatics tools (bioinformatics users), to computational biologists who can perform large-scale data analyses to solve biomedical questions (bioinformatics scientists), to software developers who build innovative new computational or statistical tools for healthcare applications (bioinformatics engineers).
Students are required to complete 240 credits of courses in the four-year curriculum, of which 96 credits are major courses (Bioinformatics), 36 credits are Common Core courses, and 18 credits are Language Enhancement courses. The remaining 90 credits are for minor and electives.
Key features of our programme include:
Anchoring courses (18 credits)
These courses adopt a case-based problem solving approach to support interdisciplinary integration of subject-specific content at each year level (horizontal integration), and provide a consistent backbone for the curriculum across different years levels (vertical integration).
Foundation Courses (36 credits)
These courses, mostly to be taken in Year 1 and 2 of the programme, focus on concepts and practical skills in fundamental topics in bioinformatics, such as biochemistry, mathematics, statistics, and computer programming.
Project: Capstone Experience (12 credits)
Each student is required to carry out an in-depth year-long research project in a specialised field of bioinformatics under the guidance of a supervisor who will provide continuous assessment on the students’ performance.
‘Data Science Lab’ Courses (6 or 12 credits)
Taking an experiential learning approach, two innovative ‘Data Science Laboratory’ courses are offered to allow students to acquire hands-on computer programming and data analysis skills, and reinforce the underlying principles of mathematical, statistical, and algorithmic concepts through tailored dry-lab practical classes in genomics and digital health.
Students are required to complete one or both of the following courses:
Disciplinary Elective Courses (18 or 24 credits)
A wide range of specialised courses in bioinformatics, biomedical sciences, statistics and computer science can be chosen to fulfil the disciplinary elective courses. Students are required to take 3 to 4 courses from over 20 courses.
Minors
Students can plan their study with the remaining 90 credits in various manners. They may opt to take a minor and/or electives offered within the BSc (Bioinformatics) curriculum or offered in other curricula.
The minor options offered in the BSc (Bioinformatics) curriculum include:
Minor in Digital Health
Example courses:
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Artificial Intelligence in Medicine (BIOF2001)
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Digital Health (BIOF3003)
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Biomedical Signals Processing and Modelling in Biomedical Applications
Minor in Biomedical Data Science
Example courses:
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Sequence Bioinformatics (BIOC3605)
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Global Health Informatics (BIOF4002)
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Statistical Machine Learning (STAT3612)
Internship & Research Experience
BSc (Bioinformatics) students are provided with opportunities to gain work experience in the industry as well as local and international research laboratories relating to bioinformatics and health data science.
An internship can be taken as a credit-bearing course during the semester, or as a non-credit bearing experience during the summer break. The workplace learning experience will enable students to apply knowledge gained during their studies in real work environments.