The Microbiology Graduate Program—an interdepartmental and interdisciplinary initiative at MIT—integrates educational resources across the participating departments to build connections among faculty with shared interests and to build an educational community for training students in the study of microbial systems.
The study of microbes has been critical in our current understanding of basic biological processes, evolution, and the functions of the biosphere, and has contributed to numerous fields of engineering. Microbes have the amazing ability to grow in extreme conditions, to grow slowly or rapidly, and to readily exchange DNA. They are essential for life as we know it, but can also be agents of disease. They are instrumental in shaping the environment, in evolution, and in modern biotechnology. Microbes are amenable to virtually all modern approaches in science and engineering. As such, they provide natural engineering laboratories for creating new capabilities for industry (e.g., pharmaceuticals, chemicals, energy) and are the foundation of pioneering efforts in synthetic biology, i.e., building life from its component parts. Effective study of microbes and their applications demands multiple interdisciplinary approaches that cross all scales of biological organization, from molecules to vast ecosystems.
Research in microbiology is going on throughout MIT and involves more than 50 faculty. These faculty are from several departments in both the Schools of Science and Engineering, including Biology; Biological Engineering; Chemical Engineering; Chemistry; Civil and Environmental Engineering; Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences; Electrical Engineering and Computer Science; Materials Sciences and Engineering; and Physics. Many labs take multiple approaches to studying and manipulating microbial systems and the expertise and research covers a wide range of areas, including biochemistry, biofuels, biotechnology, cell and molecular biology, chemical and biological engineering, computational biology, ecology, environmental biology, evolutionary biology, genetics, genomics, geobiology, immunology, pathogenesis, structural biology, synthetic biology, systems biology, and virology.
Interdisciplinary training in microbiology is in increasing demand in both public and private sectors. This program provides a broad exposure to underlying elements of modern microbiological research and engineering as well as in-depth research experience in specific areas of microbiology. Program graduates will be prepared to work in a range of fields in microbial science and engineering, and will have excellent career options in academia, industry, and government.
