UMBC and the Foundation for Advanced Education in the Sciences (FAES) at NIH established a partnership to extend academic opportunities for their respective students. Qualified students who successfully complete coursework in data science, bioinformatics, or technology transfer at FAES may be able to transfer coursework into UMBC’s Master of Professional Studies in Data Science.
I am an MPS Data Science student and I am interested in taking BIOF classes from FAES. What should I do?
You should visit FAES’ website (https://education.faes.org/), create an account, and register for classes. Make sure that the content of the course you took from FAES doesn’t overlap with a course you already took from UMBC (For example if you already took DATA 602 (Introduction to Data Analysis and Machine Learning) from UMBC you cannot transfer BIOF 509/510 (Applied Machine Learning) credits from FAES as the content of these courses are overlapping). If you are not sure whether the course you would like to take from FAES is eligible for credit transfer or not please check with Dr. Yousuf at maliyou1@umbc.edu.
After completing the course, you should fill out the “Transfer of Credits” form and submit it to the Graduate School along with your official transcripts provided by FAES. This process might take up to 8 weeks. The “Transfer of Credits” form can be found on UMBC’s Graduate School website.
What are the Bioinformatics Pathway elective courses?
You can transfer in coursework from FAES to serve as a nine-credit Bioinformatics pathway within the MPS. Note that FAES offers only 2 credit (7 weeks long) courses and two 2-credit credit courses are needed to be combined to be considered equivalent to three-credit graduate-level courses offered at UMBC. Students with no programming experience and students with some basic programming experience are advised to take “BIOF 339 & BIOF 439” and “BIOF 501 & BIOF 529” paired courses, respectively, but not both. UMBC MPS Data Science students may choose three courses (or course pairs) among the courses listed in the table below as their “Bioinformatics” pathway courses.
| BIOINFORMATICS PATHWAY ELECTIVES | Equivalent Number of Credits at UMBC |
| BIOF 339 Practical R or BIOF 501 Introduction to R (2 credits) BIOF 439 Data Visualization with R* (2 credits) |
3 |
| BIOF 395 Introduction to Text Mining (2 cr) and BIOF 399 Deep Learning for Healthcare Image Analysis* (2 cr) |
3 |
| BIOF 450 Evolutionary Genomics (2 cr.) and BIOF 540 Gene Expression Analysis |
3 |
| BIOF 518 Theoretical and Applied Bioinformatics I (2 cr) and BIOF 519 Theoretical and Applied Bioinformatics II (2 cr) |
3 |
| BIOF 521 Bioinformatics for Analysis of Next Generation Sequencing and another 1 or 2 credits course (needs to be either 300, 400, or 500 level) | 3 |
Note that FAES adds more courses to its curriculum every semester. So there might be new courses offered by FAES but not mentioned in the list above. In such cases, please check with Dr. Yousuf at maliyou1@umbc.edu to see whether the new course is part of the credit transfer agreement between FAES and UMBC.
How do I pay for these classes?
You need to pay for the classes you take at FAES through their Payment Portal (https://faes.org/payment).
What courses does FAES offer in the fall, spring, and summer?
You can check course availability in FAES’ online Academic Programs Catalog. FAES online catalog is updated with the upcoming academic year’s information in late May and on a bi-monthly basis for every upcoming term.
When does registration begin?
Registration start dates are indicated in the Academic Calendar.
Whom should I contact at FAES to get more information about these classes?
Dr. Hazuki Miwa at hazuki.miwa@nih.gov