UCSF creates unifying program in quantitative biosciences

February 1, 2010
By Kaspar Mossman, QB3

UCSF has created an umbrella program in quantitative biosciences that will help raise the university's profile as a destination for top graduate students.

The program, the Quantitative Biosciences Consortium (QBC), brings together existing graduate programs in biophysics, bioengineering, chemistry and chemical biology, pharmaceutical sciences and pharmacogenomics, complex biological systems, and biological informatics.

"We're a key educational component of QB3 at UCSF," says Charles Craik, a QB3 member who is the program's chair. Matt Jacobson, also a QB3 member, is the vice chair. The QB3 administration at UCSF will take no direct role in running QBC, but will coordinate with the program to promote quantitative biosciences as a field attractive to students, postdoctoral fellows and new faculty.

The QBC motto is "Strength in Numbers," which has a double meaning, Craik explains. "One, there's strength in being quantitative; two, there's a larger community for students, faculty, and postdocs, so they feel part of something, not just off on their own."

To give this unity a concrete feeling for students, Craik and Jacobson have consolidated the separate student lounges into one large room on the second floor of Byers Hall which is under renovation. "It'll be a place where they can interact and mingle, spend more time with one another—in addition to it being a workplace, it's a meeting place to share mutual scientific interests," he says. Journal clubs, new coursework and symposia will also bring QBC participants together.

"QBC helps us recruit the best and brightest," Craik says. Instead of just seeing a relatively small program—such as biophysics—a prospective graduate student checking out UCSF on the web will see that biophysics is part of QBC, a more extensive program that complements UCSF’s depth in many areas.

QBC will also help its constituent programs synergize at their interfaces with one another.

QBC will initially be funded with $400,000: half from the UCSF Program for Breakthrough Biomedical Research, and half from QB3. "The lion's share will go to scholarships," Craik says, which will help UCSF recruit the best applicants. "We can now say in their acceptance letters: 'you're going to be a QBC scholar.'"

The scholarships will be available to this year's entering class, although QBC is in stealth mode and does not yet have a website. One is being developed.

UCSF committees that voted to make QBC a reality were excited about the prospect of making quantitative biosciences a bigger draw at the university. "They also saw it as an investment," Craik says. "We hope to be able to leverage this for more with NIH, NSF and outside funding agencies. Seldom when you write a grant can you say you have institutional support to the tune of nearly a half a million dollars. It's a great opportunity if we do it right."