Objectives

The objective of the Bachelor's Degree in Bioinformatics is to train a professional figure with solid foundational skills in both Biology and Computer Science/Information Engineering. This graduate will be employable to provide high-level technical support in healthcare institutions and biotech companies, or will be prepared for further specialization paths for future recruitment into scientific research institutions.
To this end, a large number of credits for the basic courses are dedicated to Mathematical, Chemical, Physical, Computer Science, and Statistical disciplines. Likewise, ample space is given to subjects in the INF (Computer Science), ING-INF (Information Engineering), and MAT (Mathematics) sectors within the related educational activities.
Specific educational objectives in the information science and engineering area concern, in particular: the acquisition of theoretical, methodological, experimental, and applied competencies in those fundamental areas of computer science that pertain to the study of living systems at all levels.
Specific objectives in the biological and biomedical area are, in particular: the acquisition of theoretical, methodological, experimental, and applied competencies in the areas of genetics, biochemistry, and cellular and molecular biology, including applications related to more specific diagnostic and therapeutic activities.
To achieve these aims, the curriculum for the Bachelor's in Bioinformatics must:

  • Include tools of discrete and continuous mathematics; principles and structures of hardware and software processing systems; techniques and methods for the design and implementation of basic and application software systems; knowledge in fundamental biological, biochemical, and biomedical disciplines and in computer applications in these fields.
  • Provide the graduate with the skills necessary to work in the design, implementation, development, management, and maintenance of bioinformatics systems.
  • Allocate a sufficient number of credits for laboratory activities within the core and related educational activities.
  • Include, in relation to specific educational objectives, complementary activities such as training internships in companies, public administration facilities, and laboratories, as well as study periods at other Italian and foreign universities, including within the framework of international agreements.

Students will be provided with both the technical-practical tools and the methodological foundations necessary to create a genuinely multidisciplinary professional profile. Indeed, from the first year, basic notions of mathematics, physics, statistics, and chemistry will be taught alongside essential knowledge for understanding the structure and function of biological systems interpreted from a molecular and cellular perspective.
The goal of the mathematics/statistics and physics courses is to provide the basic tools to develop logical-mathematical and statistical skills oriented towards the use of molecular and cellular data for biomedical themes, as well as to orient the student's mindset towards a quantitative scientific approach and to provide the ability to formalize real-world problems and solve them with automated computational tools.
Within the basic courses in mathematics, physics, and statistics, the student will be gradually guided – in synergy with the basic courses in cellular and molecular biology – through the typical themes and questions of biology. For this purpose, computer science and cellular/molecular biology labs will be included.
The goal of the computer science course is to provide, from the outset, the ability to design and develop programs through both procedural and object-oriented programming, and the ability to integrate modules and libraries. Basic methodologies for the design and analysis of iterative and recursive algorithms, the main data structures, and their related algorithms will also be provided.
The basic chemistry courses provide a global vision of the properties and reactivity of the main elements and their most important compounds. Courses in inorganic and organic chemistry are planned from the first year, in order to directly interface with the parallel courses in mathematics, physics, and cellular/molecular biology.
Starting from the second year, knowledge in genetics, as well as cellular and molecular biology, will be deepened. Between the first and second year, the specific activities in bioinformatics are scheduled, which can therefore usefully leverage the mathematical-informatics and biological knowledge already acquired in the first year. In the second year, these activities aim to provide the knowledge useful for the professional use of biological databases and the main analysis tools available online, to understand algorithms for the alignment of biological sequences and structures, and to use controlled biological vocabularies.
In the third year, the notions of bioinformatics will develop towards more advanced technologies and methods for the generation of biomolecular data and their analysis. Furthermore, methods for the visualization of large-scale data and their multi-level integration will be illustrated.
In the third year, the possibility is offered to deepen and complete the preparation through related and supplementary subjects in two main directions:

  • One with a more computer science/engineering character, through the study of advanced methods and algorithms for the analysis of biomolecular data and data science, oriented towards the analysis and design of formal models of information generation in biological systems.
  • The other with a more biological character, where students can delve into applied biotechnological fields with great potential.

Particular care will be devoted to creating an "integrative" mindset that can harmoniously coordinate competencies that are currently separated by field specializations. In other words, the course as a whole (and the individual courses specifically) will be centered on the application of mathematical/informatics concepts to the problems of cellular molecular biology and its diagnostic and therapeutic derivations. To this end, teachers will be continuously monitored and sensitized to avoid, as much as possible, the compartmentalization of skills and to promote the integration of programs.
This approach will naturally allow for easier entry into the world of work, whose multidisciplinary nature is universally called for and desired (in both academia and industry). The quota of time dedicated to individual study is defined in the Educational Regulations of the degree program.