Graduate Program Requirements
The PhD degree requires a minimum of 72 credit hours earned from a combination of coursework taken in the first year of the PhD Program in Biomedical Sciences (PPBS) program and subsequent years in the Structural Biology department, along with four to five years of laboratory research in a Structural Biology faculty member’s research laboratory.
PPBS First Year Coursework
First Semester
BMS 501: Cell Biology (4 credits)
BMS 502: Essentials of Genetics and Genomics (3 credits)
BMS 503: Principles of Biochemistry (4 credits)
BMS 509A: PhD Program Laboratory Rotation (3 credits)
Second Semester
BMS 510A: Laboratory Rotation II
BMS 510B: Laboratory Rotation III
BMS 511: Fundamentals in Biomedical Sciences (1 credit)
2 electives from the PPBS curriculum*
*We recommend you take electives from the list below:
STB 531: Protein Production, Purification, and Crystallization (3 credits)
BCH 507: Protein Structure and Function (2 credits)
BCH 519: Bioinformatics and Computational Biology (3 credits)
Structural Biology Requirements
Departmental First Semester
STB 533: Crystallographic Methods of Structural Biology (3 credits)
STB 612: Structural Biology Seminar (1 credit)
RPN 604: Ethics for Biomedical Research (1 credit)
STB 700: Dissertation Research (13 credits)
Departmental Second Semester
STB 531: Protein Production, Purification, and Crystallization (3 credits)**
BCH 507: Protein Structure and Function (2 credits)**
STB 534: Dissertation Proposal Preparation (1 credit)
STB 612: Structural Biology Seminar (1 credit)
STB 700: Dissertation Research (11 credits)
**if not taken in the second semester of year 1
Students defend their preliminary research proposal at the end of the Departmental Second Semester; upon successful completion, the student is reclassified as a Doctoral Candidate in the Department.
Subsequent Semesters (year 3-5)
STB 612: Structural Biology Seminar (1 credit)
STB 700: Dissertation Research (1 credit)