Affiliated Programs

UCSF Affiliated Programs*

• PhD, Joint UCSF/UC Berkeley Graduate Group in Bioengineering, UCSF Schools of Pharmacy and Medicine; UC Berkeley College of Engineering
• PhD in Biomedical Informatics, Biomedical Informatics Graduate Group, UCSF School of Pharmacy
• PhD in Epidemiology and Translational Science, Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, UCSF School of Medicine

*Note that only UCSF students from the listed affiliated programs may apply for the DE in Computational Precision Health

UC Berkeley Affiliated Programs**

• PhD, Joint UC Berkeley/UCSF Graduate Group in Bioengineering
• PhD in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
• PhD in Computer Science
• PhD in Biostatistics
• PhD in Statistics
• PhD in Computational Biology
• PhD in Epidemiology
• PhD in Health Policy
• PhD in Industrial Engineering and Operations Research
• PhD in Information Science

**In addition to the affiliated PhD programs listed here, students from any PhD program at UC Berkeley may apply for the DE in CPH and are advised to consult with their advisor regarding their interest.

Program of Courses

Students admitted to the CPH DE program complete:

1. 2 semesters / 2 quarters of the CPH Doctoral Seminar
2. At least 3 courses from the Core Course list, in the following two domain areas:
   • Health and Public Health Sciences
   • Computing and Statistical Sciences

Students in a primarily computational PhD program (for example, Bioengineering, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Computer Science, Statistics, Biostatistics, Computational Biology, Industrial Engineering and Operations Research) will be required to take at least two courses in the health domain; those in Epidemiology, Health Policy, or other primarily health/public health focused programs will be required to take at least two courses in the Computational Sciences domain. Students from other PhD programs will consult their DE Advisor for guidance on the appropriate balance of courses between the two domains.

Examples of qualifying courses are provided on the UCSF and UCB Courses tabs. Additional courses falling within the two domains below may also qualify, to be approved by the student’s DE advisor.

CPH Doctoral Seminar

All students will participate in at least 2 quarters / 2 semesters of the CPH Doctoral Seminar. The seminar will consist of a combination of journal club-style discussion of recent literature in Computational Precision Health, and guest faculty speakers drawn from across the CPH Graduate Group and beyond. This seminar will include DE students from UCSF and UC Berkeley, and CPH ­­­PhD students. 

UC San Francisco Qualifying Core DE Courses

Health Science and Health Informatics

Clinical Reasoning and Personalized Medicine: diagnosis and treatment, evidence-based medicine

• EPI 204 (TICR) Clinical Epidemiology, M. Kohn/T. Newman (Fall, 3 units)
• BPS 171 Precision & Personalized Medicine: Healthcare Frontiers, E. Burchard (Spring, 1 unit)

Health Informatics: electronic health records, data interoperability

• EPI 231 (TICR) Use of EHR for Clinical Research, M. Pletcher/A. Odisho (Spring, 3 units)
• EPI 226 Informatics tools for health disparities research, W. Brown (Winter, 2 units)
• IMS 243 Human-Centered Design, C. Lyles (Fall, 2 units)

 Computing and Statistical Sciences

• BIOSTAT 273 Introduction to Biostatistics, D. Quigley (Fall, 1 unit)
• BIOSTAT 216 (TICR) Machine Learning in R for the Biomedical Sciences, J. Feng (Winter, 3 units)
• DATASCI 225 (TICR) Advanced Machine Learning for the Biomedical Sciences II, G. Valdes (Spring, 3 units)
• IMS 245 Introduction to Implementation Science: Theory and Design, A. Cattamanchi, P. Shete (Fall, 2 units)

Note: If a student elects to take courses in the Training in Clinical Research (TICR) or the Masters in Translational Medicine (MTM) programs, additional fees will be required for enrollment, which will be the student’s responsibility.

UC Berkeley Qualifying Core DE Courses

Health and Public Health Science

Clinical Reasoning and Personalized Medicine: diagnosis and treatment, evidence-based medicine

• PH250B Epidemiologic Methods II, Ahern (Spring, 4 units; offered Spring 2022)
• Foundations of Global Health, Reingold, Fong (Fall, 3 units; last offered Fall 2021)
• PH 226C Economics of Population Health, Dow (Spring, 3 units; offered Spring 2022)
• PH255D Methods in Social Epidemiology, Ahern, Hubbard (Spring, 2 units; offered Spring 2022)
• PH222A Health Care Technology Policy, Robinson (Spring, 3 units; offered Spring 2022)
• PH235 Impact Evaluation for Health Professionals, Colford and Gertler (Fall, 3 units; last offered Fall 2016)

Computing and Statistical Sciences

• CS289 Introduction to Machine Learning, J. Listgarten, J. Malik, M.M. Zhang (Fall and Spring, 4 units; offered Spring 2022, Fall 2021)
• Stat 156/256 Causal Inference. (Fall, 4 units; last offered Spring 2018)
• CS281A/STATC241A Statistical Learning Theory, P. Bartlett, M. Jordan, M. Wainwright (Fall, Spring, 3 units; last offered Fall 2021)
• STAT154 Modern Statistical Prediction and Machine Learning, N. Karoui (Spring, 4 units; offered Spring 2022, Fall 2021)

Advising

DE students will be assigned a CPH DE Advisor at time of acceptance to the program. The DE Advisor will be a Core member of the CPH Augmented Graduate Group, from the same home campus as the student and cannot be the same as the student’s Dissertation Advisor.

Application

Please plan to apply at least two semesters/three quarters before your Qualifying Examination. Applications will be reviewed annually.

Interested students should identify a Computational Precision Health faculty member  who they have contacted about acting as DE advisor, and include this information in their application materials.

Students will be selected from the pool of applicants on both the UCSF and UC Berkeley campuses. Applications for the Fall 2024 cycle are now closed. More information will be posted about upcoming application cycles when possible. Contact Bianca Victorica with questions at biancav@berkeley.edu