Doctor of Philosophy in Molecular Genetics - Computational and Systems Biology

The Department of Molecular Genetics is administered from the Medical Sciences Building and has nearly 100 faculty members whose labs are located within the Medical Science Building, the Best Institute, the Donnelly Centre for Cellular and Biomolecular Research, the FitzGerald Building, the Hospital for Sick Children, Mount Sinai Hospital, the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research, and Princess Margaret Hospital.
The Master of Science and Doctor of Philosophy programs in Molecular Genetics offer research training in a broad range of genetic systems from bacteria and viruses to humans. Research projects include DNA repair, recombination and segregation, transcription, RNA splicing and catalysis, regulation of gene expression, signal transduction, interactions of host cells with bacteria and viruses, developmental genetics of simple organisms (worms and fruit flies) as well as complex organisms (mice), molecular neurobiology, molecular immunology, cancer biology and virology, structural biology, and human genetics and gene therapy.
Computational Biology seeks to help understand biological systems using computational methods that can take advantage of large and complex data being increasingly generated by genomics technologies. Systems Biology studies biological systems as a whole, considering properties not apparent when examining one component at a time, and requires a combination of experimental and computational methods to map and understand these complex systems. Computational and Systems Biology are often combined and share the goals of understanding how biological systems work at the cellular and molecular level, how these systems may break to cause disease and how to fix these failures and develop useful therapies. Amazing progress has been made in this field recently, taking advantage of exponentially increasing data measuring many aspects of biological systems. An entire cell has recently been simulated and hundreds of thousands of genomes are being used to map mutations causing thousands of diseases. Molecular Genetics researchers in Computational and Systems Biology have made major progress on understanding alternative splicing, discovered thousands of novel protein interactions and complexes, mapped new metabolic pathways, discovered mutations that underlie a range of human diseases, including cancer, found new pathways of therapeutic vulnerability in pathogens and created the first complete genetic interaction map of a cell, substantially improving our understanding of basic genetics.

Completed or nearing the completion of a four-year Bachelor of Science degree or equivalent (MSc or PhD (Direct Entry))
A B+ average or higher cumulatively in a BSc degree to be considered for our MSc program,
An A- average or higher cumulatively in their MSc or BSc to be considered for our PhD (Direct Entry) program.
Transcript Requirements

To be considered for the PhD (Direct Entry) program:
Applicants must have completed or are nearing the completion of a Master of Science degree. Applicants must have distinguished themselves during their MSc to be considered for our PhD (Direct Entry) program.
Applicants who have never been enrolled in an MSc program but have an average of A- or higher in all relevant courses from their BSc may be considered for the PhD (Direct Entry) program.

A scan of your unofficial transcripts (submitted online). Official transcripts are not required at this point.
Your CV (submitted online).
A letter of intent

IELTS - Minimum required score 7.0 (Academic) with at least 6.5 for each component.
TOEFL IBT - Overall Score - 93, Writing and Speaking- 22, TOEFL Paper-based Test - Overall Score 580 with TWE 5.