Each semester, Vilcek Institute of Graduate Biomedical Sciences offers a variety of courses for PhD candidates. For a full list of courses, please log in with your Kerberos ID and password to the Vilcek Student Community.

Core Curriculum

The common core curriculum serves the stated goals of the program, to provide rigorous, deep training in discipline, to emphasize foundational quantitative methodology, to promote effective communication of results, and to contextualize expertise within the full spectrum of biomedicine in society.

A PhD Experience (1.5 credits)

A PhD Experience (APEX) is a foundational introduction to research. Topics covered include but are not limited to: strategies to facilitate rotation selection, building healthy resilience in the face of challenges, developing positive self-critique skills, and fostering good mentor-mentee, collaborator, and other lab relationships. This first year required class will be followed by non-credited refresher courses each following year that align with topics relevant to each phase of the PhD.

Data Analysis and Statistics in R (4 credits)

This course provides foundational knowledge in R, data exploration, visualization, and statistical analyses.

Systems Biomedicine and Society (1.5 credits)

Learners in this course will integrate across disciplines to focus on a set of systems-level biomedical problems

Foundations in Science Communication I and II (1 credit each)

This set of courses will include foundational readings, guided discussions, workshops, and practical assignments that focus on verbal and written communication in scientific contexts. Presenting will be a focus in year 1 and writing in year 2.

Elective Courses

We meet the curricular needs of our diverse disciplines through a flexible menu of elective courses that trainees can use to build a personalized curriculum. The flexibility in elective courses meets the growing trend of inter- and trans-disciplinary science and encourages trainees to merge quantitative and qualitative content to rigorously train in their chosen fields. We offer foundational electives, which are introductory courses that provide foundational knowledge within the core disciplines represented within the Vilcek program, as well as other electives, mainly advanced courses that provide further depth in discipline.

Examples of foundational electives are listed here.

Foundational Electives

Advanced Regression Modeling

Applied Sequencing Informatics

Cell & Developmental Biology

Deep Learning

Epidemiologic Methods

Fundamental Concepts of MRI

Fundamentals of Microbiology

Genetics and Genomics

Introduction to Cellular Neuroscience

Introduction to Immunology

Machine Learning

Methods in Quantitative Biology

Molecular Mechanisms in Biology

Molecular Neuroscience

Regression Models I and II

Statistical Inference I and II

Methods Courses

We also offer methods courses for students who hope to gain depth in discipline in a method.

Examples include:

Advanced Cytometry Techniques: Theory, Application and Data Analysis

Imaging and Image Analysis

Mass Spectrometry

Single Cell Omics

Techniques in Structural Biology