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Introduction to Medicine for Graduate Students
About the Course
Course Sessions and Events
About the Projects
Student Profile

Overview | FAQ | Faculty | Requirements

Overview

Immunology 230 is a project-based, single-quarter, four-unit course that addresses the need for graduate students in biosciences, bioinformatics, and bioengineering to learn concepts and principles used by physicians in understanding human disease. The curriculum focuses on diabetes mellitus as a paradigm for learning about any disease.

Course directors include: Tandy Aye, MD, Assistant Professor of Pediatric Endocrinology and Betsy Mellins, MD, Associate Professor of Pediatrics. Presenting faculty are drawn from a variety of disciplines throughout the School of Medicine, as well as Engineering, Humanities and Sciences, and Law. For a full listing, visit our Faculty page.

Class meets every Tuesday and Thursday from 9:00-11:00 am in Room 4105 CCSR (4th floor/North of the Center for Clinical Sciences Research Building). The first 90 minutes are typically reserved for lectures. The link "Course Sessions and Events" contains a list of this spring's lecture topics and planned out-of-class events, which are designed to provide exposure to clinical, laboratory, and industry environments.

Projects involve identifying a problem area in diabetes research and/or clinical practice, researching the state of the art in this problem area, and proposing a practical improvement based on students' knowledge of medicine.

Educational Goals

After completing the course, the learner should be able to:

  • understand how medical knowledge is organized
  • appreciate the concerns and tools of the various scientific fields and clinical disciplines within medicine
  • identify quality sources of medical information
  • gain some familiarity with medical language
  • learn specific information about human physiology and pathophysiology
  • identify opportunities to apply his/her primary discipline to unsolved medical problems

For additional information, please see our answers to frequently asked questions on our FAQ page.