Director’s Message

The Tri-Institutional PhD Program in Computational Biology & Medicine brings together the exceptional educational and research resources of Cornell University in Ithaca, its Medical College in NYC (Weill Cornell Medicine) , Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center , and The Rockefeller University. Students have varied research projects from which to choose and are mentored by our unparalleled program faculty across these outstanding campuses.

It’s an exciting time to be working in the area of computational biology and medicine.

Rapid advances on all biological scales—from the protein level to the organ level—are enabling scientists to understand biology. The last decade has seen an information explosion in biology and medicine, powered especially by the next-generation sequencing revolution that has provided unprecedented genomic, epigenomic, transcriptomic, and now epitranscriptomic data on the molecular state of cells. These advances have been coupled with emerging single-cell technologies enabling the analysis of phenotypic diversity of cell populations and powerful microscopy and imaging techniques providing quantitative data on the spatial organization of tissues. At the protein level, there have been advances in quantitative proteomics, as well as the cryo-EM breakthrough, which is transforming structural biology into a data-intensive disciple. There is an urgent need for quantitatively and computationally sophisticated biological scientists who can leverage these massive data sets to answer biomedical questions at the molecular, cellular, tissue, and organ levels.

With this in mind, the Tri-I PhD Program in Computational Biology and Medicine (CBM) was established in 2003 to provide a unique training opportunity that takes advantage of the exceptional educational and research resources of Cornell University in Ithaca, its Medical College in NYC (Weill Cornell Medicine)Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center , and  The Rockefeller University. When students graduate from CBM, their research findings, prominent publications, and presentations at national and international conferences leave them well positioned to become leaders in the computational biology professional community.

Students in the program are diverse in their backgrounds (with prior degrees in biology, computer science, and physics, among others) and their interests (with research projects in all areas of current biomedical sciences, including computational genomics, cancer biology, systems biology, and neuroscience). Students enjoy the sense of excitement that permeates the three institutions – environments that foster continuous scientific advances, and which provide for interactions with investigators from around the world.

If the idea of becoming a scientific leader in this field appeals to you, we invite you to explore our website to learn more about this unique graduate training opportunity.

Christina Leslie, PhD
CBM Program Chair

We welcome your application!