Undergraduate Minor

With a minor in CM, students will have a solid grounding in the development and application of computational methods in multiple key areas of medicine. Specifically, they will understand how mathematical models can be constructed from biophysical laws or experimental data, and how predictions from these models facilitate diagnosis and treatment of a disease. Graduating students will be conversant with a wide variety of statistical, deterministic and stochastic modeling methods. They will be able to develop a model and to write code to implement it; they will be able to analyze and visualize the resulting data from the simulations. These skills are essential to the advancement of modern medicine, and are prized both in academic research and industrial research. The courses and research opportunities available in the CM minor will place students at the forefront of the application of mathematics, computing and engineering to human health. Whether you go on to medical school, graduate research, or biomedical industries, the comprehensive quantitative training and exposure to cutting edge CM techniques will give you a competitive advantage for working in the medicine of tomorrow – which will be data-driven, predictive, personalized and preventative.

Yes. The minor will provide both foundational training and opportunities for specialization in Computational Medicine. Students can select electives from an approved list that match their interests. We also provide examples of curricula in some key subareas of Computational Medicine, including:

Computational Physiological Medicine develops mechanistic models of biological systems in disease, and applies the insights gained from these models to develop improved diagnostics and therapies. Therapies could be diverse drugs, electrical stimulation, mechanical support devices and more.

Computational Molecular Medicine harnesses the enormous amount of disease-relevant data produced by next-generation sequencing, microarray and proteomic experiments of large patient cohorts, using statistical models to identify the drivers of disease and the susceptible links in disease networks.

Computational Anatomical Medicine uses medical imaging to analyze the variation in structure of human organs in health and disease. Such image analysis has been integrated into clinical workflows to assist in the diagnosis and prognosis of complex diseases.

Computational Healthcare is an emerging field devoted to understanding populations of patients and their interaction with all aspects of the healthcare process.

Techniques for and applications in each of these four key subareas will be introduced in the required core courses, so that students will be exposed to the breadth of Computational Medicine, and will be able to identify preferred areas of interest.

The minor is available to all Whiting School of Engineering (WSE), Krieger School of Arts and Sciences (KSAS), and School of Medicine (SOM) premedical undergraduates. Students should have sufficient mathematical and programming background and should plan to complete the minor prerequisites during their first two years of study in order to be prepared for the minor.

Number of Students Who Graduated with the Minor by Department