Overview

Graduate students usually enter the program at the beginning of fall semester, but in special cases a student with previous experience may be admitted for the spring semester. Deadline for all fellowships and assistantships is January 1, but exceptional qualifications may lead to awards at other times.

The programme

In addition to the courses listed in the curriculum, a number of interdisciplinary courses are available to interested students in the BCMB program. The listings in Biology, Plant Biology, Cellular Biology, Genetics and Microbiology should be consulted to determine the range of courses available to graduate students majoring in BCMB; see the online Graduate Bulletin.

The Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology is in the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences. It functions largely as a graduate department with programs of study leading to the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees. There are 20 large research laboratories for biochemistry and molecular biology in the Davison Life Sciences Building, a $36 million facility completed in 1991. The building houses a fermentation plant with facilities for the large-scale production and processing of microorganisms, animal quarters and a large suite of plant growth chambers giving the department facilities to work with any type organism. Several faculty members have labs in the Complex Carbohydrate Research Center, which is housed in a $10 million research building and is currently composed of six faculty members and 100 support personnel.