M.Sc. in Bioinformatics and Systems Biology: Systems Biology

Bioinformatics and Systems Biology is a joint degree programme from VU Amsterdam and the University of Amsterdam (UvA). Courses are taught at both universities. VU and UvA jointly issue a degree to graduates. As a Bioinformatics and Systems Biology student in Amsterdam, you benefit from the expertise, networks and research projects at both universities and affiliated research institutes.

The programme guarantees that, upon successful completion of the study, you can communicate effectively with your colleagues, irrespective of your focus on experimental or computational disciplines. You will get a basic introduction to molecular cell biology, biomathematics, biostatistics and programming.

During the MSc programme, you can choose between two specialisations, Bioinformatics or Systems Biology, or choose both.

Bioinformatics deals with large-scale data analysis, like DNA-sequencing experiments. Programming, algorithms and machine learning are important elements. Bioinformatics is extensively used within the field of biomedicine, but also in many other areas of molecular biology.

Systems Biology encompasses modelling large biological networks, in combination with experiments to probe the system. Mathematical modelling, structured large-scale experiments and statistical analysis are important elements in the specialisation. Systems Biology is extensively used in bioengineering and biomedicine.

Excellent international reputation

The programme has an excellent international reputation. Research groups with extensive experience in a broad range of experimental and theoretical research lead the programme.

Integrated programme

The programme truly integrates a Bioinformatics and Systems Biology perspective. Your compulsory courses will tackle research problems within both fields. You may opt to take elective courses with an in-depth focus on a single discipline, such as molecular biology or machine learning.

You will study current issues, challenges and opportunities in both topics. There are ample opportunities for interesting and challenging internships, in hospitals (such as in oncology and clinical genetics), at biotech companies, at seed breeding companies, in the pharmaceutical industry, in data science and, of course, at bioinformatics and systems biology groups at universities.

Supervision

You will be assigned a mentor who will support you during the entire programme. Moreover, one of the staff members will supervise your practical coursework and internships.

In the first year in particular, much attention is paid to the basic principles of both bioinformatics and systems biology.

Students with a major in Bioinformatics expand their knowledge in sequence analysis, next generation sequencing, prediction and simulation of protein structures and medical applications of Bioinformatics. Students with a major in Systems Biology expand their knowledge with models of biological networks, experimental verification of models, relevance of systems biology for research and synthetic biology.

In the second and final year students will have two research internships, one in the field of bioinformatics and one in the field of systems biology.

Bioinformatics

In the Bioinformatics specialisation track, you will follow three additional profile courses in which you will learn how to write algorithms that can align sequences, design complex bioinformatics workflows to process molecular profiling data, predict how protein folds given only their sequence, simulate protein molecules, and apply machine learning effectively on large-scale molecular profiling datasets in biomedicine.

These profile courses are compulsory for the Bioinformatics specialisation:

• Algorithms in Sequence Analysis
• Structural Bioinformatics
• Bioinformatics for Translational

The Systems Biology specialisation track comprises three additional profile courses. In these courses, you will learn how to model large metabolic pathways, how to deal with large and heterogeneous experimental datasets, how to set up experiments to probe biological systems and how experiment modelling and data analysis should be combined.

These profile courses are compulsory for the Systems Biology specialisation:

• Basic Models of Biological Networks
• Systems Biology in Practice
• Statistics with R