2019-39

Arizona State University
University Senate

Senate Motion #2019-39

Motion Introduced by: Curriculum and Academic Programs Committee, Lili Wang, Chair

Date of First Reading: February 25, 2019

Date of Second Reading: March 25, 2019

Title of Motion: Request from the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences –School of Life Sciences– for the establishment of a graduate certificate– Computational Life Sciences

Action Requested: This curricular proposal has received all college, school, unit and university administrative approvals, and is being presented to the Senate for review and voting decision.   

Rationale: Graduate students in life sciences fields are now being required to work with ever-increasing sizes of biological data, which require skills in data analysis, and a strong grounding in hypothesis-driven and hypothesis-generating research methods. The School of Life Sciences (SOLS) has faculty that span a diverse background of scientific disciplines in computation and life sciences to uniquely address training in quantitative skills grounded in integrative biological frameworks. New and diverse big data types are emerging in the life sciences including biomarker data, long term monitoring data, longitudinal samples, genomic, transcriptomic, proteomic, and metabolomics data for human and non-human samples (including viruses, plants, animals, bacteria, the environment, and ecosystems). Being able to quantitatively combine and analyze these data types, and consider the ethical implications of large life sciences data (e.g., personalized genomics, or endangered species data) is critical for life sciences graduate students; SOLS is expertly poised to offer training in this area.