With the establishment of vast databases of genomes, molecular constituents, and electronic medical records, and exponential development in the technology to collect this data, the Bioinformatics field addresses the challenges of developing of robust methods for data analysis and its meaningful interpretation.  See more information.

If you are considering a career in computational biology, the minor program will provide an excellent introduction to core concepts in the field while offering a hands-on learning experience in wet and dry labs.  If you are a Life Sciences major and want to focus your career on coding, completion of hte minor program will ensure you graduate with competent programming skills.  Regardless of your major or long-term career objectives, the coursework and research experiences offered by the minor program will help you decide future directions and provide you with a competitive edge in negotiating the job market or graduate school application process.

Many UCLA undergraduates who complete the minor work in industry and academia.  At present, there is a rapidly growing industry around next-generation sequencing.  Recent UCLA Bioinformatics alumni have gained admittance to graduate programs in computational biology at universities such as Harvard and Princeton.

CS proposed offerings

Math proposed offerings

For other department courses, you will need to check with that home department.

LS 30A & 30B

If you took LS 30A/B, you do not need to go back and enroll in Math 31A, 31B, 32A to meet requisites for Bioinformatics required math courses.  You can just take MATH 32T or C&S BIO M32 to bridge from the LS 30 series to the Math 30 series.  This will leave you well prepared for Math 33A or Math 61 and Math 170E or C&EE 110 as a probability elective.  

Undergraduate Research is not required, but you are strongly encouraged to supplement coursework with hands-on research experience.  By petition, up to 8 units of COM SCI 199/194 or BIOINF 199/194 may be use to satisfy Elective credit for the minor as well as up to 4 units of 199 research in your major department. Research units are arranged between students and affiliated faculty.  Learn more about available research projects in bioinformatics at UCLA.  Once you arrange research, you may create a 199 contract course via myUCLA and follow the instructions to be enrolled.

The current lead faculty member of the Bioinformatics minor is:  Sriram Sankararaman

Enrolling in Engineering Courses

If you are a declared minor, you should be within the restrictions and able to add your required courses. If you are having issues enrolling, please contact us via myUCLA Message Center.

If you have not actually processed the paperwork to add the minor yet you will not be able to add yourself.

• Enrolling in CS 31: http://web.cs.ucla.edu/classes/enroll/31/
• Enrolling in CS 32: http://web.cs.ucla.edu/classes/enroll/32/
• Enrolling in CS 33-188 and any other Engineering course: You will need to fill out the Enrollment Consideration Request (ECR): https://www.seasoasa.ucla.edu/ECR/ Once majors and minors have had a chance to enroll in 2nd pass (think about 2 weeks after pass 2 begins), the CS department will be able to assess demand and we will enroll you wherever there is room, or we will go to the department to increase enrollment to accommodate requests.)

Historically we’ve been able to accommodate all bioinformatics requests.

Some lectures of LS 7A are restricted to first year students, but others are open to continuing students. For information about enrolling, please contact the LS Core office for assistance. https://www.lscore.ucla.edu/contact-us/

For students who added the minor in Fall 2019 or later, Math 61 is required.

For students who added the minor prior to this time, Math 61 is an extra class you may have taken to meet the requisites for algorithms.  You may petition to have these 4 units count towards your “20 units that need to be unique to the minor” if needed.  Just contact a CS counselor via myUCLA Message Center.

The faculty reassessed Biostats 100A and found that it really is more statistics than probability and doesn’t quite prepare you for what you need it to, so they have removed it from the requisite options for the Bioinformatics Core courses COM SCI CM121, CM122, and CM124.

If you really want to be prepared, I recommend you take STATS 100A or Math 170E for the CS CM120 series (EC ENGR 131A and C&EE 110 also work if you meet these requisites).   These classes will also fulfill a Bioinformatics elective!