Bioscience and bioinformatics is a new interdisciplinary area including life science, chemistry, and information science, for exploring the world of organisms and molecules, which are amazing information systems created by nature, with keywords “life”, “information” and “engineering”.
Advanced informatics technologies are essential in chemical, biotechnological and medical companies, research institutes, research and development divisions, and production sites. The Department of Bioscience and Bioinformatics provides education programs combining two areas: computer science and informatics that are needed by the time; and life science and biotechnology that open up the next generation. The department is one of the few academic institutions in Japan which produce engineers with such interdisciplinary knowledge. The graduates are highly expected by the industry.
The theme of the department is to understand life, imitate life, and create life, with information technologies as well as life science.
The future of bioscience and bioinformatics rests on your shoulders.
The curriculum for the Department of Bioscience and Bioinformatics is designed to cover the basics of biology and chemistry, equipping the students with comprehensive information processing technology, as well as experimental techniques in biochemistry and genetic engineering. We offer courses in the analyses of biotic information with information processing technology (so-called bioinformatics*), and courses that aim at engineering applications for biotic information. It is earmarked both by biology experiments (wet study) and information engineering practicums (dry study). In the final year, students engage in cutting-edge research under the guidance and supervision of faculty members with distinctive characters who are active in these wide-ranging areas. Students can also obtain a high school teacher’s license (mathematics and information) if they desire. The courses in informatics (compulsory) cover the widest range of questions from the Exam for the National Certificate of Fundamental Information Technology Engineers. They also contain units on subject matters related to the examination for the Bioinformatics Certificate (Japan Biological Informatics Consortium).
The understanding of life (learning), simulations of the life mechanism on computers (mimic), and the development of effective medications or cultivation of microorganisms that are beneficial and friendly to the environment (creating) will be crucial factors for human life. Our faculty members are actively conducting various researches from the perspectives of “life,” “information” and “engineering.” Bioinformatics is one of those areas of research among them.
A new techno-academic discipline that deals with biological issues by applying techniques in mathematics, informatics, statistics, computer science, and others. This discipline was derived from the realization that it is imperative to exploit the power of computers, as the ability of humans is limited for the exhaustive analyses and utilization of the vast amount of genetic data and results from biological experiments.