DARTMOUTH – The Massachusetts Board of Higher Education on June 20 approved the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth’s new Ph.D. program in integrative biology, designed to position UMass as an asset to the state’s life sciences industry.
“Our aim is to assist the South Coast region in sharing in some of this prosperity by fueling the local science industry and research with graduates invested in the region,” said Mohammad Karim, UMass Dartmouth’s provost and chief academic officer.
Although cities in southern Massachusetts have worked to improve administrative infrastructure for biotech businesses in the region, workforce shortages have prevented companies from relocating or expanding in the region. UMass Dartmouth’s new integrative biology program seeks to grow the local life sciences workforce.
“Our intention is to produce graduates who are capable of thinking beyond the traditional boundaries,” said Karim. “These scientists will be prepared to enter an increasingly collaborative scientific world where solving problems requires integrative thinking.”
The Ph.D. program, set to launch this fall, will allow students to pursue their specializations in depth while also broadening their education in other advanced biological fields, UMass said.
The program is supported by the UMass Biology Department’s faculty, which has increased its annual grant funding from $1 million to more than $3 million in the last decade. The department currently includes 380 undergraduate students whose education will also benefit from the new research activity generated by incoming Ph.D. students.
With the addition of the integrative biology Ph.D., UMass Dartmouth now offers more than a dozen doctoral programs, and the number of annual doctoral degrees awarded by the school has grown from 3 to 34 since 2010, UMass said.
Kaylen Auer is a PBN contributing writer.
