Great Ideas in Computational Biology: Course Overview
Great ideas in computational biology (02-180 and 02-181) is a sequence of two 5-unit minis offered to students at Carnegie Mellon University who are interested in an introduction to the beautiful field of computational biology. It is taken by students of all years of study, but it is aimed at School of Computer Science first-year students who are interested in the computational biology major. I am unaware of a computationally rigorous introduction to computational biology students for first-year undergraduates at any other institution. The course was taught to its first cohort in spring 2019 as a joint project with Carl Kingsford. I have taught the course as a solo project since that time, making lots of changes to the subjects taught in response to what students have reported particularly enjoying, and after consulting our faculty in the Computational Biology Department. In spring 2021, I tried something a bit different by incentivizing course participation with donations to charity.