The expertise of bioinformaticians consists in the ability to formulate biologically relevant questions, to design and implement the appropriate solution by managing and analyzing high-throughput molecular biological and sequence data, and to interpret the obtained results.

The interdisciplinary two-year program offers a balance between acquiring general skills and knowledge and a high level of specialization.

General skills can be applied to a whole range of other application domains:

• basic background knowledge in diverse disciplines proper to the field of bioinformatics such as statistics, molecular biology, computer science, datamining
• programming skills
• engineering skills

Specific skills related to the bioinformatics domain:

• expert knowledge in the field of bioinformatics

The program (120 ECTS or credits) consists of:

• A reorientation package. Offers courses complementary to the bachelor education in order to obtain a higher level of interdisciplinarity. Interdisciplinarity is a basic requirement for the core package. The steering committee of the Master program will advise the content of the reorientation package to each individual student, based on his/her past curriculum (27 ECTS) (see also other pages).
• A core package. The general package builds upon the elementary knowledge and skills, which students have gained in their previous curriculum and in the reorientation package and integrates these in various courses contributing to the general knowledge and skills (Statistics/datamining module and biology module) and more specialized knowledge (Bioinformatics modules). One course free of choice (4 ECTS) is to be added to the core package. (59 + 4 ECTS)
• A specialization package (equivalent of one semester, to be started at the beginning of the second year). This specialized package comprises an original research task, in an academic or company setting, under the supervision of a promoter, and which results after a public defense in the master thesis. (30 ECTS)

The detailed information is contained in this file, and the full curriculum can be found here.

In order to study bioinformatics you need a sufficient knowledge of the basics of biology, mathematics/statistics and IT. The first semester of the first master is a "reorientation module". The courses you will have to follow are designed to be complementary to the knowledge you obtained in your pre-education: for instance, if you have a pre-education in biology you will have to follow non biologica, but IT and mathematics/statistics related courses. Optional courses are only available for those students that can complete the gaps in their preknowledge with a program of less than 27 stp. After the "reorientation module" your knowledge should be sufficient to attend the more advanced courses.