The Biology Graduate Program represents many areas of biology, and interactions with a diverse group of colleagues provide opportunities to broaden every student's thinking and make connections between different fields and scientific approaches. Areas of research include microbiology, cell biology, development, physiology, neuroscience, animal behavior, plant biology, genetics, computational biology, evolution, ecology and biodiversity.
Each entering graduate student has the freedom to pursue topics ranging from the behavior of molecules to that of cells, organisms, genomes, and ecosystems. We encourage students to get broad exposure through lab rotations with any faculty member in the Biology Graduate Group. As students focus on more specific research interests, they tailor their graduate education accordingly, choosing courses from different departments and schools at Penn as appropriate.
Students complete most of their course work and lab rotations in the first year and then start their thesis research in the second year while completing their teaching requirement and preparing for their candidacy exams. Students are then fully focused on thesis research by the end of the second year. Students still have the option of taking additional courses in advanced years in order to enhance their graduate research.