Welcome to the Department of Physiology & Biophysics
Thank you for your interest in Physiology & Biophysics at Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine. Graduate education plays a key role in the vibrancy of our scientific research, and we work continually to improve the programs and opportunities for graduate students. The faculty is dedicated to teaching and mentoring of both medical and graduate students. Members of the faculty have received many awards for excellence in teaching and approximately 80 students have graduated from our programs with the Ph.D. degree over the last 20 years. Our students go on to extremely successful careers and may be found in all areas of academic, pharmaceutical and industrial activity.
Research in the department encompasses many facets of structural biology, cell biology, molecular and cellular physiology, and molecular biophysics. The Department has extensive facilities and instrumentation for state-of-the-art biophysical and physiological research. These include laboratories for NMR (both spectroscopy and imaging), X-ray diffraction and cryo-crystallography, electron cryo-microscopy and 3-D image reconstruction, micro-spectroscopy, calorimetry, light and fluorescence microscopy, optical tweezers, surface chemistry, electrophysiology, tissue culture and molecular biology. The Department has extensive computing facilities based on workstations, servers and clusters, together with personal computers.
The research programs of the faculty are extremely well supported by research grants from the National Institutes of Health, the American Heart Association and other funding agencies. The size of the Department is conducive to collaborations between research groups, and many of the faculty members have joint appointments in the Department of Biochemistry or the Department of Medicine or the Cell & Molecular Biology Program. The Department sponsors a popular weekly seminar series that features both local and outside speakers.
We are located in the new Center for Advanced Biomedical Research Building and the Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine Instructional Building. Our faculty has a wide range of interests, our scope is expanding into the field of proteomics and genomics and we are committed to continued growth.
As you examine the graduate opportunities at Boston University School of Medicine, I would like to suggest that you look closely at the programs in Physiology & Biophysics that are offered by the department. Our website provides up to date information on all the exciting aspects of the research and teaching programs of the department and I invite you to browse for the latest information. We encourage inquiries about our academic programs at any time.
Please take the virtual tour of the Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine provided with the Division of Graduate Medical Sciences Catalog. Don’t hesitate to contact us with any questions or comments.