Focus Area Courses

One of the following courses must be taken at any time during PULSe graduate training.

• GRAD 61200 - Responsible Conduct in Research (1 credit) Lecture once per week for 50 minutes per meeting for 8 weeks. Offered: Fall, Spring. Overview of values, professional standards, and regulations that define responsible conduct in research. Students learn the values and standards of responsible research through readings and lecture/discussion and practice application of these values and standards to research situations through class discussion of case studies from life sciences research.
• HORT 60100 - Plan & Research Plant Science Research (1 credit) Lecture once per week for 50 minutes per meeting for 16 weeks. Typically Offered Fall. The purpose of this course is to acquaint students with the culture of scientific research and the processes of scientific discovery and review. The course will: 1) acquaint students with techniques used in presenting short scientific talks, as e.g., at national meetings, 2) expose students to procedures used in preparing scientific papers, proposals, etc., 3) introduce students to the outcomes expected to be achieved by graduate education and the processes by which students are mentored and evaluated, 4) help students begin formulating their research project proposal, 5) acquaint students with guidelines for biosafety and responsible conduct of research and provide a forum for discussion of ethical issues confronting researchers.

One of the following courses must be completed before the end of Year 2 of PULSe graduate training; however, the proposal writing class should not be taken during the first year.

• HORT 60300 - Grants and Grantsmanship (1 credit). Lecture once per week for 50 minutes per meeting for 16 weeks. Offered Spring. Focuses on funding opportunities in agricultural research and techniques of writing successful scientific grant proposals. Students will write a proposal on a research topic of their choice during the course, and they will gain experience in the peer review process by preparing written reviews of proposals and participating in a panel meeting in which proposals are discussed and ranked.
• MCMP 62500 - Grant Writing (1 credit). Offered Fall. Instructions for the preparation and submission of an NIH-style RO1 grant proposal will be covered. Each student will write and submit a complete proposal. The proposals will be student reviewed in a mock study section at the end of the course.

This requirement is designed to train students from a variety of backgrounds in methods of acquiring and/or analyzing data in any of the various disciplines within PULSe. As such, there is a menu of courses from which students (and TGs) can choose depending on the individual student or TG needs. These courses and their descriptions are listed below. Students must satisfy this requirement by the end of Year 2.  Students in the Biotechnology TG take an additional 9-12 Math/Statistics credit hour requirements.

• BIOL 59500 - Methods and Measurements in Physical Biochemistry (3 credits) Lecture 3 times per week for 50 minutes per meeting for 16 weeks. Offered: Fall. Introduction to physical methods in biochemistry and physical measurements of biological systems, such as UV/Visspectroscopy, circular dichroism, IR and Raman spectroscopy, fluorescence, neutron diffraction, light scattering, scattering from ordered materials, x-ray crystallography, NMR and ESR spectroscopy, electron microscopy, mass spectroscopy. Application of these techniques to studies of structure and dynamic behavior of biological macromolecules, composition, and orientation of structural elements and cofactors, ligand binding and conformational change in biological interactions and detailed probes of local changes in structure, solvent accessibility and specific bonds formed in biological reactions. Interpretation of the resulting data and analysis of strengths and limitations of each technique. Examples from research articles are discussed that illustrate how these methods are used in modern biochemistry. Prerequisite: Introductory Calculus and Physics or permission of the instructor.
• STAT 50300 - Statistical Methods for Biology (3 credits) Lecture 3 times per week for 50 minutes per meeting for 16 weeks. Offered: Fall, Spring. Introductory statistical methods, with emphasis on applications in biology. Topics include descriptive statistics, binomial and normal distributions, confidence interval estimation, hypothesis testing, analysis of variance, introduction to nonparametric testing, linear regression and correlation, goodness-of-fit tests, and contingency tables. Credit allowed in either 50300 or 51100 but not both. Prerequisite: Calculus.
• STAT 51100 - Statistical Methods (3 credits) Lecture 3 times per week for 50 minutes per meeting for 16 weeks. Offered: Fall, Spring. Descriptive statistics; elementary probability; sampling distributions; inference, testing hypotheses, and estimation; normal, binomial, Poisson, hypergeometric distributions; one-way analysis of variance; contingency tables; regression. Credit allowed in either 503 or 511 but not both. Prerequisite: MA 16200 or authorized equivalent courses or consent of instructor.
• STAT 51200 - Applied Regression Analysis (3 credits) Lecture 3 times per week for 50 minutes per meeting for 16 weeks. Offered: Fall, Spring. Inference in simple and multiple linear regression, residual analysis, transformations, polynomial regression, model building with real data, nonlinear regression. One-way and two-way analysis of variance, multiple comparisons, fixed and random factors, analysis of covariance. Use of existing statistical computer programs. Prerequisite: STAT 50300, STAT 51100, or STAT 51700, or consent of instructor.
• CS 59000 - Computing for Life Sciences (3 credits) Lecture 3 times per week for 50 minutes per meeting for 16 weeks.  Offered:  Fall.  Basic bioinformatics algorithms and Python programming.  Course topics include biological databases, algorithms for biological sequence (DNA, protein), sequence alignment and database search, sequence motif search, protein tertiary (3D) structure comparison, protein-protein interaction and comparative genomics.  This course is targeted at non-CS majors who are working or interested in the bioinformatics field.  No programming experience is required.
• CS 66200 - Pattern Recognition and Decision-Making Processes (3 credits) Lecture 3 times per week for 50 minutes per meeting for 16 weeks. Offered: Spring. Introduction to the basic concepts and various approaches of pattern recognition and decision-making processes. Topics include various classifier designs, evaluation of classifiability, learning machines, feature extraction, and modeling. Prerequisite: ECE 30200 or authorized equivalent courses or consent of instructor.
• CS 53000 -Introduction to Scientific Visualization (3 credits) Lecture 3 times per week for 50 minutes per meeting for 16 weeks. Offered: Spring. Teaches the fundamentals of scientific visualization and prepares students to apply these techniques in fields such as astronomy, biology, chemistry, engineering, and physics. Emphasis is on the presentation of scalar, vector, and tensor fields; data sampling and resampling; and reconstruction using multivariate finite elements (surfaces, volumes, and surfaces on surfaces). Prerequisite: CS 25100 or authorized equivalent courses or consent of instructor.