Curriculum and Degree Requirements

NSF Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship Program at The University of Texas at Austin

Students admitted to the IGERT program must take a set of core courses to provide them with inter-disciplinary knowledge and skills in addition to fulfilling the requirements of their home department. 

 

Course substitutions are considered if they achieve the goals of the IGERT program. Requests for substitutions should be sent to the director in advance and require the signature of the student and their primary advisor. 

The most current course descriptions can be found on-line at the UT Registrar's web site http://www.utexas.edu/student/registrar/catalogs/

 

Curriculum for 2007- 2008

IGERT trainees must take 2 of the following 4 courses:

IGERT trainees must also register for the following two courses:

BIO388L Lab Studies In Cell Biology: A laboratory course with hands-on optical microscopy, image processing and cell biology.  Using light and electron microscopy combined with digital image processing, students in this course gain a practical, hands-on experience in cell and molecular biology.  This is accomplished through data gathering, observations, and extensive writing in the form of laboratory reports. The reports are in the format style of a typical research article manuscript that would appear in The Journal of Cell Biology.  The students use high-resolution transmission electron microscopy to visualize the 3.4 Å inter-atomic spacings of carbon atoms in graphite. The students have direct access to our upgraded state-of-the-art digital image processing facility where we demonstrate new applications for cell and molecular biology.  Combining the use of transmission electron microscopy, digital image processing, video microscopy, and a variety of optical methods, the students are exposed to some very sophisticated, recent methods in cell and molecular biology-procedures which will most likely be applied and used during the student's post-graduate and professional affiliations.

 

BME381J-4 Optical Spectroscopy: A laboratory course which provides students with hands-on instruction to use all of the equipment in the IGERT user facility, including an absorption spectrophotometer, a fluorimeter (steady state and time-resolved) and a deconvolution fluorescence microscope. Detailed lab assignments for this course are publicly available on-line through the course website. In this course, students work in inter-disciplinary teams to carry out the laboratory experiments, write lab reports, solve homework and examinations. They also propose independent semester projects which they carry out in inter-disciplinary teams. At the end of the course, they write an abstract in the format for the Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics sponsored by the Optical Society of America and give a mock conference presentation describing their project.

 

ME397 The Enterprise of Technology: Lab to Market: The course will have three components:  (1) Main assignment: students will develop a plan for assessing and commercializing a technology they are working on or would like to be involved with. (2) Supporting Tools/Skills: In-class workshops and exercises will give students background in entrepreneurship, market research, technology assessment and commercialization, and team building and management. (3) Technical Assistance of Campus Experts: Various speakers with experience in the fields of tech commercialization will come speak to the class to offer their assistance and input (areas such as technology licensing, patents, entrepreneurship, etc.)

 

BME385J-37 Functional Imaging:  Principles, Approaches, and Applications:  An overview of the physics and state of the art capabilities in cell and molecular imaging. This course will cover four types of imaging: MRI, ultrasound, nuclear and optical imaging.  For each unit, we will overview the basic physics of the imaging modality, discuss present clinical and research capabilities for cell and molecular imaging, discuss contrast agents in clinical use and under development, and present real-world examples of the clinical need and application for the technology.

 

BME197T IGERT Seminar Series: A weekly seminar series that hosts visiting speakers from other universities, national labs, and industry.  IGERT trainees in their second year are required to give a seminar in this forum.

 

BME197U IGERT Ethics Seminar:  One of the most important aspects of training young scientists and engineers is to provide education regarding the ethical and responsible conduct of scientific research. All IGERT trainees are required to take part in this seminar during their first year in the program. We have designed a course with a practical emphasis on situations students are likely to face in their careers; most seminars open with a lecture presented by an expert in the field, followed by discussion focused around case studies in small groups. Seminar topics include plagiarism, the process of review of scientific papers and grants, confidentiality, scientific fraud and misconduct, anatomy of an academic career, balancing work and outside interests, technology transfer rights, responsibilities and policies within the UT System.