Chemical and Physical Biology

The Ph.D. degree in Chemical and Physical Biology is available to all students who enter the trans-institutional QCB or IGP graduate admissions programs, or the MSTP. The Ph.D. training program is designed to provide rigorous integrated training at the interface of the chemical and/or physical sciences and the biomedical sciences. The coursework and research components of the program prepare students for research careers in which they can bring state-of-the-art tools of the modern chemical and physical sciences, mathematics, statistics and informatics, and computer science to bear on cutting-edge problems in biology and medicine.  

The curriculum prepares students for research careers in four tracks: chemical biology; structural biology and molecular biophysics, imaging science, and systems biology. Research opportunities are available in a broad range of areas including biological mass spectroscopy, bio magnetics and nonlinear dynamics, computational biology and molecular modeling, protein-protein interactions, NMR and EPR, x-ray crystallography and scattering, cryo-electron microscopy, fluorescence spectroscopy and microscopy, in vivo imaging, protein-nucleic acid interactions, structural biology, chemical biology, molecular toxicology, macromolecular structure and dynamics, mechanistic enzymology, nanocrystals, proteomics, and mathematical modeling of biological systems. 

• Graduate Record Exam (GRE)
• Language Proficiency Exam (TOEFL or IELTS)
• Transcripts
• Statement of purpose
• Letters of recommendation

You may start a Graduate School application for one of the following degrees: PhD, MA, MS, MFA in Creative Writing, and MLAS. For any other degree not listed above, please begin looking at the list of disciplines and majors offered through Vanderbilt University.

Applicants with bachelor's or comparable non-U.S. degrees may apply to the Graduate School.