Bioinformatics

Within the master’s programme in Bioinformatics, three specializations are offered: Structural Bioinformatics and Drug Design, Sequence Bioinformatics, and Computational Systems Biology.

A common unifying element of the bioinformatics foundation across all specializations includes courses such as Advanced Bioinformatics, Data Management, and subjects focused on machine learning and artificial intelligence. The goal is to provide students with a high-quality education in core bioinformatics and to enable them to deepen their knowledge and experience in one of the three specializations. These specializations cover the main directions in which contemporary bioinformatics is developing and thus prepare students for strong employment opportunities in the field of bioinformatics and modern life sciences.

Upon successful completion of the programme, the graduate is able to:

• understand modern approaches in functional genomics and the basic concepts of proteomics;
• be able to navigate extensive bioinformatics databases and ontologies, and to extract, process, and utilize the required data
• be able to predict the secondary and tertiary structures of proteins and nucleic acids;
• be familiar with key bioinformatics tools and understand relevant data formats. To be able to appropriately apply these tools to solve real biological and related problems;
• understand the life cycle of scientific data, including options for their storage, management, and annotation, as well as to be familiar with the related fundamental ethical and legal issues;
• be able to process, analyze, and visualize large-scale datasets;
• be familiar with advanced machine learning techniques and be able to use tools that employ these methods—particularly in data analysis and knowledge inference.

Graduates have the knowledge and skills to go directly into practice - companies and research organizations active in bioinformatics, healthcare, pharmacology and information technology. However, they can also go on to further studies within doctoral programmes, such as Biomolecular Chemistry and Bioinformatics, Biochemistry, Genomics and Proteomics and Life Sciences at the Faculty of Science or the Computer Science programme at the Faculty of Informatics.

The internship is not a compulsory part of the follow-up Master's programme.

The standard length of the master’s thesis is approximately 60 pages, including footnotes, the title page, table of contents, index, list of references, and abstracts. The thesis has the character of an independent research project consisting of a scholarly introduction to the topic, a methodological section, a results section, a discussion, and a conclusion. Students are expected to demonstrate the ability to critically work with academic literature, process the concepts and theories found therein, design and implement analyses or software solutions based on them, evaluate analyses or test software solutions, and identify relevant answers to the stated research question. The thesis may be written in Czech, Slovak, or English.

After completing the follow-up master’s degree, graduates may continue their studies at the doctoral level. At the Faculty of Science, it is possible to proceed to the doctoral study program in Biomolecular Chemistry and Bioinformatics. At the Faculty of Informatics, graduates may continue in the study program Informatics with the specialization in Technologies and Methodologies of Computer Systems. Bioinformatics-oriented doctoral study programs are also offered by other universities in the Czech Republic as well as across Europe.