Double-Degree Study Programme: Bioinformatics

Study for the bachelors degree lasts three years. The program culminates in a double diploma and upon successfully completing their work, graduates are granted the academic title of Bc./BSc. by the universities.

During the first year of their bachelors studies, students receive instruction in the basics of informatics, biology and mathematics at the university in Ceske Budejovice. During the second year, instruction takes place at the university in Linz and focuses on interdisciplinary studies such as bioinformatics, chemistry and applied informatics. The third year is divided proportionately between Ceske Budejovice and Linz and is devoted to elective subjects, work on bachelors projects and seminar participation. During the final semester, instruction will be offered in blocks; thus students defending their thesis in Ceske Budejovice will go to Linz only a few times.

 During the second year, the students themselves will choose the focus of their final thesis. Depending upon the character of the thesis, the focus may lie in the discipline of Biology (in which case it is anticipated that the majority of time during the third year will be spent in Ceske Budejovice) or in the area of Bioinformatics (in which case more time will be spent in Linz). If students choose to focus on pure informatics, with minimal crossover into the areas discussed above, they may choose which campus they wish to spend the majority of their time at during the third year.

 The emphasis during instruction is laid on modern forms of study focused on practical instruction with the use of modern information technology.

 Students will have the chance to obtain a stipend during the course of their studies.

Employment Areas for Graduates:

Graduates in Bioinformatics may find employment in the following fields:

• Healthcare (for example, issues to do with novel illnesses and uncovering their causes, pathology and diagnosis and processing background data for clinical studies)
• Pharmaceutics (including the development of novel medicaments and effective substances)
• Ecology (understanding the interaction between organisms and uncovering the causes of genetic mutations)
• Food processing industry
• Biotechnology companies
• Biology (genomics, proteins and new generation sequencing – NGS)
• Genetics and foetal medicine, or assisted reproduction
• Informatics  (areas which require knowledge of image processing, parallel computation and databases or data structures) The development of laboratory software and program databases