Welcome
to the Department of Biological Sciences at the National
University of Singapore.
In
this Year of the Ox we celebrate the 60th Anniversary
of our founding as two departments, Botany and Zoology.
During this period we merged to become one of the best
Life Sciences Departments in the Asia Pacific Region with
core strengths in Ecology/Biodiversity, Cell/Molecular/Developmental
Biology and Biophysical Sciences. As we look forward, we
aim to create a new department whose focus is sharply centered
on emerging and strategic problems in biological sciences
and using powerful quantitative and computational biology
approaches for studying and modeling those problems.
The
mission of the Department of Biological Sciences is education,
research, and outreach. Faculty go to the local schools
to talk about their passion for biological research, the
potential benefits for the environment and human health,
and the careers that await students with a Life Sciences
education. Befittingly, DBS anchors the teaching of the
undergraduate Life Sciences Curriculum and offers NUS undergrads
the opportunity to conduct state-of-art research through
UROPs and honor thesis projects. Our graduate program attracts
the best students from 17 countries and 3 continents. Backed
by world-class funding in biological research from NUS
and the Singapore Government, DBS offers new graduate students
their pick of projects in areas as diverse as tropical
and urban ecology and biodiversity, microbial ecology,
molecular cell biology and developmental biology of plants
and fish, structural biology, systems biology, computational
biology and bioinformatics, and new programs in mechanobiology
and bioimaging sciences. Our goal is for DBS to be an international
hub for biological sciences research.
DBS
is an international department with an international faculty
and strong international ties in research and teaching
with MIT through the Singapore-MIT Alliance (SMA) and the
MIT SMART research groups, with labs at Tsinghua and Xiamen
University through the Trilateral Research Collaboration,
and with top Indian research institutes and universities
such as the Indian Institute of Science, Anna University,
and the University of Madras. The Year of the Ox has great
promise to bring new educational and research initiatives
to DBS. We welcome you to enter this portal and explore
the diverse offerings in the Department of Biological Sciences.
Paul
Matsudaira (Professor
and Head of Department)
