The Warwick Systems Biology Centre builds on the University’s strengths in the scientifically exciting and strategically important area of Systems Biology, an interdisciplinary subject bridging the biological and physical sciences, including Mathematics, Statistics and Physics. The Centre has seen substantial investment including sizeable infrastructure and dedicated premises. The Systems Biology DTC provides training for those aiming towards a career in cutting edge multi-disciplinary research, and offers MSc training and PhD research projects at the interface between the Life Sciences, the Physical Sciences and Mathematics.
Systems Biology academic staff are based in departments across the Faculties of Science and Medicine, providing a multi-disciplinary community to support the training and research of our students. Systems Biology’s central location on campus makes it an excellent venue for fostering cross-discipline activities including lunch-time discussions, meetings, conferences, and workshops.
The Centre forms part of a local, national and international network which connects with researchers in many parts of the world. There are strong links with other EPSRC doctoral training centres and related research centres in Europe and elsewhere.
Research Areas
Systems Biology aims to understand a biological problem in terms of the interactions of many individual components, using quantitative biological methods to underpin those interactions. The aim of the Systems Biology research programme is to develop techniques that will enable us to solve biological sciences problems that are currently intractable.
The defining problems of Systems Biology include: large, variegated and high-dimensional data sets, interactions between levels of organisation, hard problems in parameter identification and optimisation. Skills and research topics include:
- Mathematical and computational modelling
- Bioinformatics and statistics
- Genomics and proteomics
- Imaging and image analysis
- Software design and development
Areas of particular interest are:
- Signalling and cell fate
- Gene regulatory networks
- Cortical circuitry Development
- Circadian periodicity
Research Degrees
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Duration: 3 or 4 years
Warwick Systems Biology PhD projects involve both experimentation as well as theory and data analysis and are therefore appropriate for graduates from both the Life Sciences and Physical Sciences. We aim to provide our students with an insight into the problems and challenges in each of those fields, thereby gaining the communication skills to bridge the gap that exists between the individual disciplines. SBDTC PhD students are trained to be intimately familiar with advanced mathematical and computational techniques and their use in data analysis, molecular modelling and experimental design.
Taught Master’s Degree
MSc in Systems Biology
Duration: 1 year full-time
Places available: 10
The MSc in Systems Biology prepares you to work at the interface between disciplines. The MSc course consists of 2 research projects, one “wet “ and one “dry”, and 8 modules such as Quantitative Biology, Numerical Methods for Modelling, Mathematical Models of Biological Systems and Technologies for the Study of Systems Biology. The MSc provides an ideal training for students from single discipline backgrounds in biological or physical sciences to progress to a PhD in the interdisciplinary subject of Systems Biology.
