In a small classroom setting, Integrated Life Sciences students learn about academic resources on and off campus.

Designed for entering students enrolled in the Honors College Integrated Life Sciences (ILS) program, this course uses an active learning approach to emphasize inquiry, critical thinking, quantitative reasoning, and hands-on data analysis. This course will cover a variety of bioinformatic related topics, including genome assembly and scaffolding, sequence alignment algorithms, epigenetics, a bioinformatic examination of the central dogma in molecular biology, gene finding, proteomic analysis, the evolution of molecules, cells and organisms, molecular switches, and biological networks.

Students will learn empowering mathematical techniques through the understanding of biological models. Models are chosen from a variety of biological disciplines. Mathematical skills that will be developed along the way include: solving non-linear difference equations, eigenvector analysis, and the implementation of these algorithms as computer models.