Message from Our Director
Overview of the program
Biophysics Interdepartmental Group (BIG) at the University of Guelph is a unique program of masters and doctoral study that seeks to further our understanding of biological processes through the application of the concepts and techniques of the physical sciences. Unlike many biophysics graduate programs across Canada, BIG focusses on basic discovery research in the sciences, rather than medical and clinical applications. Experimental research conducted by students within BIG spans the entire breadth of the life sciences spectrum, including biochemistry, molecular biology, microbiology, and human biology. In addition, many BIG graduate students carry out non-experimental research, applying computational tools to predict the behaviour of biological systems at a level ranging from molecules and genes to populations.
Goals of the program
The objectives of our program are to provide graduate students with comprehensive education and research training in the field of Biophysics. The program emphasizes multidisciplinary experimental and computational approaches, in which physical and computational tools are applied to biological problems. Collaborative research between faculty members with complementary research interests is actively encouraged, and several graduate students are co-supervised by two research groups.
BIG faculty members
Several BIG faculty members are recognized experts in their field. They include six senior (Tier 1) Canada Research Chairs (Drs. Dutcher, Lam, Lipkowski, Sharom, Whitfield and Yada) and three junior (Tier 2) Canada Research Chairs (Drs. Anand, Eberl and Ladizhansky). Two faculty members (Drs. Brown and Dutcher) hold Premier's Research Excellence (PREA) awards, two members hold Ontario Early Researcher (ERA) Awards (Drs. Bauch and Oliver), and one holds a Natural Sciences and Engineering (NSERC) Accelerator Supplement (Dr. Oliver). Thus twelve members of the core faculty of BIG are recognized, nationally or internationally, as leaders in their research fields. Many junior faculty members have joined the University of Guelph and BIG over the past few years; they show outstanding promise as researchers, and carry out research at the leading edge of their areas of expertise. They are an outstanding attractant to graduate students who are seeking exciting research in new and developing fields, such as structural biophysics, computational biophysics and biomathematics.
Laboratory facilities
The research equipment and facilities of the BIG faculty and their home departments are second to none. A large amount of equipment has been obtained recently, so that students receive training on the latest instrumentation. Most of the larger instruments and facilities were obtained by group grants and university-wide initiatives, so they are shared between many faculty and their research personnel. Graduate students working on computational research projects have access to much sophisticated computing systems, including large networks and clusters. You will find details of the various facilities and instruments available to BIG faculty members and their graduate students elsewhere on this web page.
Please feel free to contact me with any enquiries:
Dr. Hermann Eberl
Professor and Canada Research Chair
Department of Mathematics and Statistics
University of Guelph
MacNaughton, Rm. 508
ph: 519-824-4120 x52622
email: heberl@uoguelph.ca
Download the program guide in pdf format